Turkish tomatoes, banned for import into Russia, are allegedly reaching stores in the country under the guise of Moroccan shipments, as reported by Kommersant. The publication suggests that about half of the illegal imports of this vegetable come from Turkey.
Wholesalers order their supplies via a Russian online platform, whose server is located in the German city of Nuremberg. Turkish tomato batches mainly pass through Belarus and Kazakhstan and are given a Moroccan certificate of origin. The Russian Ministry of Agriculture knows about the scheme, but cannot do anything about it because the site is located outside the country. Experts, however, suggest that access to the site may be blocked in Russian territory.
Russia introduced an embargo on imports of vegetables and fruit from Turkey on 1 January 2016 following the incident with the Russian Su-24 plane at the Syrian-Turkish border. Afterwards, the ban became limited mainly to tomatoes, onions, cabbage, cucumbers and citrus fruits.
Source: monitor.bg