Forty-five people have been arrested at an illegal anti-freeze factory in the Moscow region, police said Friday.
Officers seized 45 tons of counterfeit windshield de-icing fluid and 60 tons of industrial methanol at the bootleg factory in the region's Shchyolkovsky district on Friday.
Forty-five Uzbek citizens without documents were detained at the factory.
Police said the illegal plant was operating on property belonging to a company called Shchyolkovo Agrokhim in the Shchyolkovsky district.
Special forces accompanied officials from the Federal Migration Service and Federal Drug Control Service on the raid on Friday.
"We discovered more than 9,000 bottles of anti-freeze and six tanks containing about 60 tons of methanol, a production line for filling plastic containers and labels," a source in the Federal Drug Control Service told Interfax.
The factory was equipped with modern bottling equipment and able to turn out up to 20 tons of windscreen de-icing fluid and anti-freeze a day.
The source added that documents discovered in the factory's office showed that the scheme was run by a criminal group who established a fly-by-night company through which they conducted trade.
It was producing windshield fluid under the brand names Dobraya Doroga, Sibir, FROSTSCHUTZ and Ded Moroz. The anti-freeze was labeled AIRBRAKES.
A criminal case has been opened for unlicensed use and trafficking of methylated alcohol, which is a controlled substance under Russian law.
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