MOSCOW. Feb 18 (Interfax) - Around 27 tonnes of drugs worth 114 billion rubles were confiscated in Russia last year, Russian Federal Drug Control Service director Viktor Ivanov has said.
"Almost 27 tonnes of concentrated drugs were confiscated as we prosecuted the organizers of criminal activity - they were 13,500 drug dealers, 'captains of the drug business'. This helped prevent economic damage in the amount of 114 billion rubles from wholesale batches ending up on the retail market," he told a meeting of the service's board on Thursday.
Up to 96,000 ordinary drug addicts, who were keeping drugs without planning to sell them, were held to account, and more than 450 kilograms of street drugs were confiscated, Ivanov said.
"Another important indicator is the effectiveness of measures to counter the legalization and the laundering of drug proceeds. As of the end of 2015, Russia's FSKN blocked drug dealers' assets amounting to almost one billion rubles," he said.
In 2015, courts issued 4,250 court rulings with regard to drug business organizers, he added.
The number of opium dens decreased three-fold in 2015, he also said.
"We managed to seriously, by three-fold, reduce the number of [drug] dens in residential buildings and secure a ten-fold shrinkage of the acetylated opium market in the Russian Federation," Ivanov said.
In addition to this, the service confiscated 3.6 tonnes of synthetic drugs and stopped 70 tonnes of smoking mixtures from reaching the retail market, he said.