Hannu Pasanen, Finland’s notorious “wine police” officer, returns to Helsinki’s Malmi district

Hannu Pasanen, the former police officer who spent decades dismantling Helsinki’s illegal alcohol trade in the 1970s and 80s, has revisited the crime scenes of his most notorious cases, Finnish broadcaster Yle reports. His memoir, detailing his time as Malmi’s “wine sheriff,” was published this week.

In the 1970s, Malmi was a stronghold for trokari—bootleggers selling black-market alcohol—where violence and homicide were routine. When Pasanen, then a young officer, was assigned to clean up the district in 1972, he faced death threats, physical attacks, and even a contracted hitman. Over two decades, his unit arrested more than 400 professional bootleggers, shifting police focus from petty sales to organized crime.

One of his first targets was Eila Huuska, the so-called “wine queen of Malmi,” who ran the infamous Milaca bar. Pasanen raided the establishment, declared himself the “sheriff of Malmi,” and sent Huuska to prison twice for illegal sales. Initially vowing revenge, she later bequeathed her estate to him—a gesture he declined. “The avenger became a friend, or at least she wanted to think so,” Pasanen recalled. Huuska died in 1989; Pasanen attended her funeral, bringing flowers to her grave.

A near-fatal confrontation unfolded by the Malmi railway tracks, where Pasanen and his team clashed with two brothers freshly released from prison. One stabbed a colleague in the back during the brawl. “I thought, this is it—he’s dead,” Pasanen said. Both brothers returned to prison, while his unit pressed on.

Bootleggers like “Black Matti,” a gravedigger turned dealer, became local legends. Matti lost his job at Hietaniemi Cemetery after passing out in a grave he was digging, then resurfaced at Malmi Cemetery, selling moonshine to mourners. Pasanen arrested him there. Despite the dark humor in retrospect, the trade had grim consequences: dealers sold alcohol on credit, driving customers to pawn heirlooms, jewelry, and even their homes. Ledgers seized in raids listed debts—Koskenkorva vodka, 30 marks; beer, 20 marks—alongside pledged collateral.

Pasanen’s breakthrough came when he exploited a little-used clause in Finland’s alcohol laws: Section 87, which mandated at least six months’ imprisonment for professional illegal sales. “Good Lord, this is actually a proper law,” he realized. Before his unit, police had largely ignored systemic bootlegging, targeting only one-off sales with fines.

Illicit alcohol flowed from state-run Alko stores—bought by “errand boys” and resold at triple the price—or was smuggled from the Baltics or homemade. Customers turned to trokaris when Alko closed, funds ran dry, or they were blacklisted elsewhere. A single dealer could move 100–150 bottles a week.

Pasanen’s memoir coincides with his return to Malmi, where Yle accompanied him to three key sites: the Milaca bar, the railway tracks, and the cemetery. Now in his 80s, he reflects on an era when a policeman’s work was as much about survival as enforcement—and where even his adversaries, in the end, sought his respect.