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Chinese citizen convicted for illegal gold trafficking

The Central District Court of Chita found Gao Ming guilty of illegal keeping and carrying of a major batch of precious metals and sentenced him to one year in an open prison and a...

ULAN-UDE, February 29 (Itar-Tass) — A Chinese citizen was convicted in the Baikal Territory for illegal trafficking of a major batch of gold. “The Central District Court of Chita found Gao Ming, 41, guilty of illegal keeping and carrying of a major batch of precious metals and sentenced him to one year in an open prison and a fine of 250,000 roubles,” a source in the prosecutor’s office in the Baikal Territory told Itar-Tass on Wednesday.

A lenient verdict is caused by the fact that the Chinese citizen was cooperating with the investigation and pleaded guilty.

Deputy prosecutor of the Baikal Territory Bair Dorzhiyev noted that the convicted Chinese citizen was offered to traffic illegally a batch of gold from Irkutsk to Zabaikalsk bordering with China in late November 2011. He received two packages with about three kilograms of pure placer gold in Irkutsk and went to the Baikal Territory by train. On November 29, 2011, Gao Ming was detained at the Chita railway station. He voluntarily gave away the gold in the packages, which cost more than five million roubles.

More than nine kilograms of chemically pure gold were confiscated in the region in 2011, the Federal Security Service department in the Baikal Territory said. In February FSB agents caught red-handed two residents of the Baikal Territory that were trafficking more than six kilograms of precious metal. The investigation into the gold illegal trafficking case continues.

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