Siberia customs house busts timber contraband channel to Uzbekistan

NOVOSIBIRSK, December 7 (Itar-Tass) - Officers of the Tomsk and Altai customs houses cut short operation of a crime family, smuggling timber from Russia to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
The Siberian customs administration told reporters on Tuesday that
smugglers exported over 96,000 cubic metres of timber to the tune of 364 million roubles.
Members of the crime group sold timber of shady origin for cash to
citizens of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, temporarily living in Russia.
However, the absence of documents on legal origin of logs and of an
international purchase-sale contract prevented export of purchased timber on legal grounds.
To bypass the law, the crime family forged documents, submitted to
customs bodies for export deliveries.
The next stage in the criminal scheme was creation of a plausibility of a return of received currency to an account of a seller. Following this, masterminds of the criminal group submitted a package of documents to tax bodies for redemption of VAT, provided for in timber export for a deal, phoney in reality. Thus, they embezzled several dozen millions of
roubles from the federal budget.
Customs bodies now exposed 26 episodes of criminal activities and
instituted several criminal cases under the article "smuggling", providing for imprisonment of between five and 12 years.