The General Prosecutor's Office has extradited a citizen of Kazakhstan from the Russian Federation to face criminal charges for participating in a criminal organisation, illegal drug trafficking, and drug smuggling.
According to the press service of the department, in 2003 the man was recruited into a criminal group that was involved in supplying heroin and opium from Uzbekistan through Kazakhstan to Russia. It is noted that the suspect transported, stored, and passed drugs to other members of the organised criminal group for further sale.
During special operations in 2003 in the Kyzylorda and Karaganda regions, some of the criminals were detained, with 35 kg of heroin and 28 kg of opium seized from them. They were subsequently convicted, while the suspect evaded law enforcement and was placed on an international wanted list.
Twenty years later, in December last year, he was detained in the Samara region of the Russian Federation and, at the request of the Kazakh Prosecutor General's Office, extradited to his home country.
The defendant has now been placed in a pre-trial detention centre. For these crimes, he faces a punishment of imprisonment for a term of 10 to 15 years with confiscation of property.
For context, in March, a suspect in a fraud case was extradited from Germany to Kazakhstan. It was noted that the man, along with two accomplices, set up fictitious companies and, under the guise of delivering wheat, acquired a businessman's funds totalling over 100 million tenge.
Later, it was reported that a defendant who fraudulently stole $1 million from citizens of Kazakhstan in December 2014 was detained at Warsaw airport.