Moscow- Borsht or Debbie Does Smolensk? Police got an eyeful when they raided an apartment in southeastern Moscow earlier this month.
Stacked in the apartment on Ulitsa Marshala Golovanova near the Maryino metro station were 100 DVD and video recorders apparently used to copy pornographic movies. A trip to a nearby rented garage turned up 20,000 pornographic DVDs and videocassettes.
Police were tipped off to the apartment after they arrested its owner, Nikolai Stepanov, as he sold 1,000 pirate DVDs and 5,000 videocassettes to undercover police officers posing as kiosk owners at the Gorbushka market, Moscow’s sprawling Mecca of counterfeit capitalism, police spokesman Filipp Zolotnitsky told Interfax.
Police believe Stepanov was making $15,000 to $20,000 in pure profit per month off movie sales, Interfax reported.
Stepanov has been charged with producing pirated movies, Interfax reported. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of two years in prison and a fine of 40,000 rubles ($1,400).
Police officials were unavailable for comment about the case over the past week.
Film piracy is widespread in Russia, costing legitimate producers millions of dollars each year. Authorities have made efforts in recent years to crack down on illegal production and sales, but the black market industry still appears to be flourishing.
At the same time, police are well known for going after pornography — whether it be to uphold the country’s vague pornography laws or to grab a slice of the lucrative business.
One of the nation’s largest legitimate producers of pornographic films, the St. Petersburg-based SP-Company, regularly has to deal with police confiscating its films from store shelves, said its head, Vladimir Samsonov.
“We tell them every time, ‘Guys, do you even know what pornography is?'” he said by telephone Wednesday. “They never have an answer. We tell them to take us to court, but every time they do, we win and get all of our products and money back. They don’t even know the law.”
But he is glad to see Stepanov and his pirated films off the street.
“We fight and fight against such people,” he said. “It hurts our business. We’re a legal, tax-paying company.”