A Kazakh citizen suspected of large-scale fraud and the large-scale production and sale of counterfeit medical devices has been extradited from Georgia to Kazakhstan. The Prosecutor General's Office of the Republic of Kazakhstan announced the move, infohub.kz reports.
The extradition was arranged by officers of the Prosecutor General's Office and the National Security Committee, with assistance from Kazakhstan's embassy in Georgia, the supervisory body said. The aim was to bring the suspect to criminal responsibility.
According to investigators, the suspect, seeking an advantage in tenders for the purchase of medical equipment by state medical institutions, set up an illegal scheme to obtain domestic-producer status for medical equipment. To that end, false information about manufacturing the equipment in Kazakhstan was submitted to the authorized state bodies, while no actual production was organized.
As a result, medical equipment assembled from foreign components was sold to state medical institutions as domestic products. The state suffered damage exceeding 4.5 billion tenge.
After committing the crimes, the suspect went into hiding from the criminal prosecution authorities and was placed on the international wanted list. He was detained in Georgia in March of this year and extradited to Kazakhstan at the request of the Prosecutor General's Office.
The suspect has now been placed in a pre-trial detention facility. The offences he is charged with carry a penalty of up to ten years in prison with confiscation of property, the agency said.