Vodka pipeline discovered in Kyrgyzstan

Joshua Keating has an article in Slate about an unusual pipeline:

Smuggling has always been an effective driver of technical innovation. See, for instance, the homemade submarines and catapults developed by South American and Mexican drug cartels to move their wares into the United States. But for countries of the former Soviet Union, the method of choice seems to be pipelines.
Kyrgyz customs officials have shut down a pipeline that had apparently been used to transport illegal vodka over (or rather under) the border from Kazakhstan to Kyrgyzstan:
the twenty-centimeter-thick, half-kilometer-long pipe had been laid beneath the border river Chu, said the police official from the northern Kyrgyz city of Tokmok. It was equipped with multiple valves and lay on a track along the river's bottom. "We assume that thousands of liters of alcohol were smuggled with it, primarily vodka," said the police officer.
It’s an odd story, but it’s also not the first time this has come up. In 2008, police discovered a two-kilometer pipeline through a reservoir on the Russian-Estonian border that smugglers had used to transport cheap Russian vodka into the Soviet Union. The Telegraph noted at the time that a similar pipeline between the two countries had been found in 2006.
In 2004, the BBC reported that a three-kilometer pipeline had been discovered which had been used to funnel cheap booze from Belarus to Lithuania. Police said it was the fourth such pipeline they had uncovered.
In the EU-member Baltic States, it’s a case of smugglers looking to charge European prices for cheap Russian alcohol. In the case of this week’s discovery, industry website The Drinks Business notes that: “as one of the biggest grain producers in Central Asia, Kazakhstan represents an attractive source of cheap spirits.” And as a rising oil producer, one suspects the country has some hydraulic engineering talent to spare as well.

Rico says you'd think they'd just buy the stuff cheap and sell it dear...