NUR-SULTAN, September 16. /TASS/. Kazakhstan’s National Security Committee said on Thursday it has stopped a channel of illegal migration to Russia. Its organizers were selling fake documents for crossing the border amid coronavirus restrictions.

"The National Security Committee’s department for the North Kazakh region jointly with the Border Service stopped a channel of illegal migration organized by residents of the city of Petropavlovsk. These people organized an illegal shop for the production of fake documents in a flat in an apartment block and sold these documents to Kazakh citizens for unimpeded crossing of the state border with Russia in a period of quarantine restrictions amid the coronavirus pandemic," it said.

According to the committee, the search of the flat yielded stamps of Kazakh and Russian medical institutions, PCR test results from the regional diagnostics laboratory and polyclinics, money, etc.

A pre-trial investigation is underway.