Half a tonne of caviar found hidden in speeding hearse

A speeding hearse stopped by traffic police in Russia's far east was found to be packed with half a tonne (1,100lb) of caviar.





The vehicle's driver claimed to be transporting a body to a funeral in the city of Khabarovsk, but when officers searched inside they instead found dozens of cans of the prized delicacy. The caviar was stashed inside a coffin and concealed underneath funeral wreaths.




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In its windscreen, the hearse had a sign reading "funeral" and even a picture of the supposedly deceased person. The seized shipment is reported to be worth upwards of 10 million roubles (£100,000, $156,000). It appears that this was well-planned smuggling operation which also used another car as a decoy to distract the traffic police. "But we decided to ignore it and stop the vehicle that was following it instead," says Insp Artem Shpilev.




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Police arrested the driver and another funeral parlour employee who was also travelling in the hearse - both of whom denied any knowledge of the clandestine caviar, Russia's interior ministry said in a statement. The fishing of sturgeon, which are traditionally associated with caviar, is banned in Russia to try to stop a decline in the population. But a study found that in 2010, only 19 out of 244 tonnes of caviar produced in the country were made legally.