"This is a major victory in the war against caviar criminals," Jim Armstrong, deputy secretary-general of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), said in a statement when the restriction was agreed in 2004.

But Armen Petrossian, president of the Paris-based Petrossian company which controls about 10-15 percent of the legal world caviar market, said far tougher policing was needed, including a crackdown on Internet auction sites.

"There is a vicious circle today harming legal producers," he said. Tighter restrictions often drove up prices and stoked an illicit market worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year, further endangering the sturgeon fish which produce caviar eggs.

Petrossian said, for instance, that foreign tourists often sold jars of caviar on the Internet after legally buying them on trips to Russia. He said such caviar was only for personal use and could not be legally resold.

"Internet auction sites are not the place to buy caviar," he said, adding that smugglers also often sold in cyberspace.

TAXES

Caviar retails for about 2,000-6,000 euros ($2,400-$7,150) a kilo, depending on type, with taxes making up about half the price. Caviar costing much less was usually smuggled, he said. Stored properly, caviar can stay fresh for more than 18 months.

Petrossian, who is also head of the International Caviar Importers Association, estimated the black market in poached sturgeon eggs was about the same size as the legal market at about 100 tonnes each a year.

He accused police, especially in Europe, of failing to take caviar smuggling seriously enough. "Some European countries don't seem to care," he said.

CITES says only the illegal international traffic in drugs or weapons yields bigger profits than the illicit trade in wildlife -- such as caviar, tiger skins or elephant ivory.

Petrossian said that a US ban on beluga caviar from the Caspian and Black seas this year had backfired by driving up prices and attracting smugglers.

The CITES rules will from Jan. 1 limit exports from caviar-producing countries to the calendar year of production. In 2005, caviar processed in 2004 could also be sold until March 31. Caviar can also be re-exported by importers for up to 18 months, for instance from France to Germany.

Petrossian predicted smuggling would continue, saying officials often underestimated the ability of criminals to forge export certificates or labels showing the year of production.