A man was caught trying to smuggle 48,000 cans of Heineken disguised as Pepsi into Saudi Arabia, a country where alcohol is strictly prohibited and the penalty includes a prison sentence and flogging if caught.
“A truck carrying what first seemed to be normal cans of the soft drink Pepsi was stopped and after the standard process of searching the products, it became clear that the alcoholic beers were covered with Pepsi’s sticker logos,” Al Batha border General Manager Abdulrahman al Mahna was quoted as saying by Al Arabiya News.
A video posted by Saudi customs agency on their Twitter account shows how well disguised the cans were.
Such instances of smuggling alcohol into the Muslim country are not new. A few months ago, officials caught a Saudi man trying to enter Saudi Arabia from Bahrain with 12 bottles of liquor sewed into his trousers. More recently, Saudi officials said they confiscated more than 19,000 bottles of alcoholic drinks hidden in a shipment of rice and tomato paste.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the rate of alcohol consumption per capita in Saudi Arabia is 0.2 liters per adult, one of the lowest in the world. However, since drinking is illegal and happens only clandestinely, this estimate may not be accurate.
