Man jailed for 20 years for handling half a million narcotics doses

TALLINN – The Viru County Court found Aleksandr Pukhov guilty of handling half a million doses of narcotics and sentenced him to 20 years in prison.

The court found 35-year-old Aleksandr Pukhov guilty of handling large quantities of drugs for extensive financial gain and sentenced him to 20 years in prison. The beginning of his sentence will be counted from his detention on May 27 last year.

As an additional punishment, the court ruled for him to be expelled from Estonia after serving his sentence and for a 10-year entry ban to imposed on him. The man has to pay 11,508.82 euros to the state for the costs of the criminal proceedings.

Another man was originally on trial with Pukhov in the same case, but he was acquitted by the court because the prosecutor dropped the charges against him.

According to the charges brought against him by the Viru District Prosecutor's Office, the narcotics discovered in Pukhov's possession during a search would have been enough to cause drug intoxication to more than half a million people.

According to the charges, Pukhov repeatedly acquired various drugs for further sale and great financial gain and stored them in a garage box in his possession in the northeastern border town of Narva until they were found and seized during a search at the end of May last year.

In total, some 120,000 MDMA or ecstasy tablets, about 2 kilograms of crystalline MDMA and approximately 70 kilograms of liquid amphetamine were found in the man's possession. The man was detained at the end of May last year on the day he was to hand over about 5,000 ecstasy tablets to a person not identified in the preliminary investigation, but he did not manage to hand over the tablets himself, and the other accused did so at his request.