From the NOV 2003 issue of Seed:
Credit: Kelly Cline
Like nearly every other luxury in the world, caviar is tinged with hues of danger. It has the reek of gangsters and the taste of a dying species. Now, with exclusive access to multiple federal investigations, Simon Cooper reveals just how far greed will take those who seek Russia’s black gold.
If you would abolish avarice, you must abolish its mother, luxury.—Cicero
In a crackdown on smuggling and poaching in the Caspian region, border guards seized 1.6 tons of contraband black caviar in the first quarter of the year. Guards intercepted 1,232 pounds en route to the United Arab Emirates. Fake bills accompanying the cargo suggested that local customs officials were involved. —The London Observer Service
EARLY FALL 1998—CASPIAN SEA
In a small fishing camp tucked behind the reeds guarding the shores of the Caspian Sea, a poacher prepares to process his catch. In the gunnels of his boat is a thick, writhing carpet of sturgeon, living dinosaurs that have swum the waters of the great blue earth for more than 250 million years. The poacher selects a fat female. She is about four feet long and swollen with eggs. He hits her hard with a plank of wood—not hard enough to kill, but enough to stun. Blood trickles from her eyeballs, mouth, and gills. Quickly, the poacher rolls her over, slits open her belly, reaches inside, and carefully extracts a plump, gray-black sac about the size of a pillow. He puts the egg sac into a large plastic bucket and throws the eviscerated fish on the ground, where she flaps and thrashes, her abdomen gaping, until she succumbs and dies. Later he will butcher her for meat.
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The poacher works quickly, as the eggs must be processed before they spoil. Once he has finished extracting the egg sacs he pushes them through a fine sieve, gently massaging them to avoid breaking the eggs as they separate from the surrounding membrane. Once they’re sieved, he washes them in salty water to remove blood and stubborn bits of egg sac. The clean eggs are then mixed with dry salt—enough to equal around 4 or 5 percent of the total volume of the eggs. Voila! Caviar.
The poacher takes his illicit product to the dealers, where he earns perhaps $20 a kilo. He hands over some of his money to the local mafia, payment for the protection he is “offered,” which keeps the border patrol and his fellow poachers away from his fishing grounds and camp.
A few months later, that same caviar will go on sale in New York for $2,500 a kilo.
The caviar mafia are thought to have been behind a terrorist bomb attack in the town of Kaspiysk that killed 67 people, including 21 children, and destroyed a nine-story apartment building. Most of the victims were Russian border guards and their families. The guards, who patrol Russia's new boundaries, had begun to produce results in regulating illegal traffic and, in doing so, made dangerous enemies. More than 100 people lived in the bombed building, including the commander of the locally based border guards unit, Lt. Col. Valery Morozov. Morozov reportedly had told a Russian newspaper, Rossiysky Vesti, that he had been threatened by the “sturgeon pirates.”—The London Observer Service
MAY 2, 2003—US FEDERAL COURT, BROOKLYN, NEW YORK
“My point is, Judge, and let me just say this: Mr. Panchernikov is not some kind of serial caviar criminal. He is not. He was conducting a lawful business and made mistakes in judgment that were criminal in nature. He did that. He accepts responsibility.”