The Kurchatov District Court of Chelyabinsk city handed down guilty verdicts to 13 members of an organized criminal group, finding the citizens of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan guilty of illegal drug trafficking. The press service of the Chelyabinsk Regional Court reported.
According to the investigation, from June to October 2023, citizens of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, independently of each other, entered into a criminal conspiracy with unidentified persons, who were engaged in large-scale drug trafficking in Russia as part of an organized group created on ethnic grounds.
The court’s decision notes that they were all aware of the nature and scale of the criminal acts; each of them played a specific role related to the distribution of drugs through stashes.
The accomplices acted on the instructions of their curators, with whom they communicated via the Internet using the WhatsApp messenger. The personal monetary reward of each of the defendants depended on the number of stashes they made.
Most of the defendants admitted their guilt in committing the crimes in full.
The court concluded that all members of the organized group were guilty and sentenced them to imprisonment from 7 to 12.5 years in a strict regime penal colony.