International Cheeze Cartel Busted In Russia

From the New York Times:

Russian Police Bust $30 Million Contraband Cheese Ring

Russian police said Tuesday they have busted an international ring involved in producing contraband cheese worth about 2 billion rubles ($30 million), arresting six people.

The arrests are part of a government campaign to enforce a ban on imports of Western cheese and other agricultural products imposed a year ago in retaliation for U.S. and European Union sanctions on Russia.

Police said the ring, whose operations began in March, had been supplying "as cheese a product made from cheese rennet whose import into Russia is forbidden." The product was then fixed with counterfeit labels of known foreign cheese producers and sold in supermarket chains and distribution centers in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

During the investigation, police raided 17 homes, warehouses and offices in the Moscow region, where they found 470 tons of the rennet product, equipment for making the counterfeit labels and documents confirming the illegal activity, the police statement said. It said six people were arrested, but did not identify them....MORE

And from a 2010 post reprised in 2014's "Ironically, Milk Futures Are Not Very Liquid":

We don't have many posts* on the dairy business, every couple years or so I break out the "What's Mooving" headline but the business, at least the way (whey?) it's structured in the U.S. is tough to trade from a portfolio perspective. In addition it seems to foment (ferment?) some simply awful puns in folks who write about it.

The futures are currently in backwardation, not that anyone cares....

*Back in 2010 we had a post, "CME Group expands dairy complex with cheese futures" which I intro'd with:

Years ago I heard of a Chicago company that made a whey-based artificial cheese. 

Apparently the operation was headed by a mad scientist type who had come up with the formula but had no marketing ability.

He was producing the stuff and not selling any, converting all the investors cash into this "analog" goop and storing it in Chicago area warehouses.

Then the Chernobyl reactor blew, the price of whey skyrocketed, I've no idea what the connection was, the company went broke and the receivers opened the warehouses to find tons of this 'cheeze', semi-molten in the summer heat.

That's what I thought of when I saw this story, tons of the stuff oozing out of bonded warehouses. No connection of course, just a visual....