EGYPTIAN customs officers have seized 85 200 Viagra-like anti-impotence pills at Cairo airport smuggled in from Syria, in the country’s largest ever such haul. The trafficker admitted trying to smuggle the pills, with a market price of about two million Egyptian pounds (about $500 000), on behalf of a Syrian living in Alexandria on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast. People caught trying to dodge customs duties on the imported pills, which are not illegal in Egypt, are usually fined around one quarter of the trading value of the product but not taken to court, said a customs official. Large quantities of the Syrian-made anti-impotence pills, called Vega and coloured blue like Viagra, are regularly discovered in the baggage of travellers arriving in Cairo from Damascus. – AFP
Friday August 31, 2001