Criminal group charged with gross arms business

Photo: Liis Treimann

The Estonian North Regional Prosecutor's Office has sent to the court a criminal group that is charged of illegal smuggling of firearms into Estonia and their marketing.

The Prosecutor's Office has brought charges against five men  in crimes connected with unlawful handling of firearms, their parts and parts of explosive devices. In accordance with the charges, from last April until August Sergei (48), Dmitri(43) and Mart (51) belonged to a criminal group the aim of which was earning monetary profit from unlawful handling of  firearms and ammunition.

In accordance with the information collected in the pretrial investigation Sergei and Dmitri looked for weapons dealers from Central Europe, ordered firearms from them and brought the goods to Estonia where they handed over arms for finding buyers and for the organization of resale to Mart.

In accordance with the charges Sergei and Dmitri bought ten deactivated CZ submachine guns and two CZ pistols; he organized change of the barrels and Mart sold the weapons restored into working order in Tallinn and in Harju County. Nikolai (38) took part in the sale of two of the weapons.

It appears from the investigation that Sergei (41) acquired one of the weapons and ten weapons were bought by policemen imitating crime.

The police detained  the older Sergei, Mart and Dmiri as suspects on August 14 last year." The court took the three main suspects under arrest for the period of preliminary investigation. They had earlier been punished for criminal offenses, including for crimes connected with firearms, ammunition and explosive devices, said North Regional Prosecutor Leelet Kivioja, who was in charge of the proceeding.

Nikolai has one earlier punishment and the younger Sergei has no punishment.

The search of suspects' places of residence and work in Tallinn and in Harju and East-Viry Counties yielded an unregistered pistol and several unlawful parts of weapons, mainly of submachine guns and pistols. Besides, about ten illegally acquired detonators were confiscated.

Priit Pärkna, head of the criminal office of the North Prefecture, said that catching the group dealing with weapons and explosives was an important achievement for the police. "It was a very large and complicated proceeding, the final result of which was achieved thanks to good cooperation of our criminal police officers, security police and other partners. We managed to detain the suspects thanks to that we managed to work ourselves into the actual business and take part in transactions. No doubt it twill help increase general security thanks to which it was possible to prevent  unlawful arms and ammunition business in the streets," Pärkna said.

To prevent arms business there was cooperation also with the Latvian authorities. In the middle August there were searches and detentions in the course of which the Latvian Security Police confiscated tens of weapons, ammunition and other prohibited goods.

The pretrial investigation of the criminal case was carried out by the criminal police of the North Prefecture and the North Regional Prosecutor's Office headed the investigation.