THE Customs Department is now hunting for a businessman in his 50s who is the main suspect in the operation of a bootleg distillery in Semenyih.

The Malaysian Insight was told by well-placed sources in the department that the man is also the mastermind behind a number of smuggling operations in the state, including duty-free cigarettes.

The Semenyih distillery produces fake alcohol of a popular foreign brand which is then re-bottled in the alcohol’s original bottle to fool those who could not tell the difference between the bootleg and original liquor.

A source said the department’s recovered cans and bottles of some international brands in the illegal plant are among its evidence.

“It’s a get-rich-quick operation of a syndicate. To make as much profit as possible,” a source in the department told The Malaysian Insight following the bust on the distillery.

The source said that as a proper distillery with all the right and proper equipment could cost as much as RM1 billion to build, he doubted that the uncovered bootleg distillery would cost nearly as much.

“The demand of cheap branded alcohol is the main reason why the syndicate had dabbled in the fake alcohol production as there is more money to be made.

“But the fake alcohol produces health risk as the hurried production meant the alcohol are not distilled to the required accepted safety standard as they do not have right equipment.

“The safe alcohol that we know are made with ethanol but the fake ones are produced by using cheap, unsafe ingredients that could adversely affect the consumers’ health,” the source said.

Last year, some 50 people who were mostly foreign workers died from toxic alcohol poisoning after consuming fake liquor in Selangor, Perak and the Federal Territory.

To date, police have not charged anyone for the deaths but it arrested a slew of suspects.

Customs officers have also found in the raided distillery an open vat used to clean up the used alcohol bottles and a box bearing the label of an international alcohol brand.

Those working in the distillery managed to escape as the distillery’s closed-circuit security system and the lone security guard had warned them of the raid. – June 19, 2019.