G-SPOT: How counterfeit booze ruined my happy hour

I was busy enjoying a certain bar’s alleged happy hour recently, when the spectre of counterfeit alcohol reared its ugly head.

Before I get into that story, let me clarify why I say the bar has an ‘alleged’ happy hour. To my mind, a legitimate happy hour should generally offer a 30 per cent to 50 per cent discount off regular bar prices. 

In fact, if most places that tout a happy hour followed these rules, they might find themselves hosting an ‘ecstatic’ hour or two.

Digression over and back to my experience at the hyperbolic bar. As my friends and I were indulging in our 14 per cent discount beers, some out-of-towners showed up and ordered spirits. However, instead of enjoying their drink convivially, they began to show signs of restlessness and began to question the provenance of the gin they were sipping.

The locals among us, who, due to budgetary concerns, hardly ever touch spirits, were quick to take umbrage that these ‘city people’ dared suggest that the hyperbolic bar sold counterfeit spirits. It is one thing for them to be mean with their discount, but quite another to suggest that they would con a famous British multinational alcoholic beverages company out of its profits.

A few days ago, I was again patronising the hyperbolic bar when a new buddy with a budget for spirits ordered a shooter. As the glass was being poured, he asked to examine the bottle. I was about to come up with a sarcastic line about not knowing what he had ordered when he began to scan the bottle with his phone.

This was a new move for me, and I decided to muzzle myself until I had seen more. When he finished scanning the bottle, I asked him what he was doing, and he explained that he was using an app to scan the KRA stamp on the bottle to determine whether the booze was fake.

Probably because, over the last decade and a half, I lived in a place where counterfeit cigarettes, not drinks, were common, I was quite unaware of this technical advancement.

So what was my friend’s verdict on his tequila? Apparently, it was counterfeit. He went on to explain that there are cartels that use high-tech printing presses to produce highly convincing fake Kenya Revenue Authority excise stamps and Kenya Bureau of Standards quality stickers.

This took me back to the protesting out-of-towners from a few weeks earlier and got me thinking that perhaps they were not being fussy for the sake of it, but that the hyperbolic bar had indeed fallen to the schemes of booze counterfeiters.

When I asked my friend how this was possible, he seemed to be very well informed on the matter. Some might say he was suspiciously so, but I think he is just keen not to be poisoned.

He told me that counterfeit alcohol enters the Kenyan retail supply chain, including supermarkets, through a mix of weak supply links, sophisticated printing fraud and inside corruption. 

I said I wouldn’t believe supermarkets such as the one the hyperbolic bar buys its drinks from would be a party to such shenanigans. He then told me that while supermarkets have strict vendor vetting rules on paper, the cartels exploit specific loopholes to place fake liquor on official store shelves.

Also, it would appear that supermarkets do not buy alcohol directly from breweries. They rely on third-party distributors, and fake alcohol rings often create licensed distribution companies, where they mix a few genuine crates with dozens of counterfeit crates when delivering stock to retail warehouses. 

In other cases, rogue supermarket workers and bartenders may buy real alcohol for the accounts, but quietly source cheap, fake bottles from the streets. They display the fake bottles on the shelves and pocket the massive price difference personally.

Because the bottles look physically identical to real ones and feature stamps, inventory teams easily accept them. 

According to my friend, a large volume of counterfeit spirits and raw industrial ethanol enters from neighbouring countries. Smugglers bribe border officials or use panya routes to transport the raw chemicals to illegal blending factories hidden in residential areas like Nairobi, Kiambu and Nakuru.

Now I know more about counterfeit alcohol, and hopefully so do you. Whose round is it, and do you have that app?