Smuggling of narcotic substances

The prohibited act is unlawful movement across the border. It does not require a sale, a profit, or an intention to supply anyone. Carrying a substance in luggage, on the body, in a vehicle or sending it by post all fall within the article, and so does receiving an international parcel where the receipt forms part of the movement.

Quantity drives the part, using the same Government thresholds as Article 228. Aggravating features — a group acting in concert, use of an official position, concealment from customs control by special means — move a case up.

Article 229.1 frequently sits alongside Article 228 or 228.1 on the same facts: one article for bringing the substance in, another for possessing or supplying it afterwards. Whether that is a genuine multiplicity or double-counting of a single act is a live defence question.

The offence is intentional. A person who genuinely did not know that the object they carried contained a controlled substance has not committed it. Investigators know this and treat knowledge as something to be inferred, so the case is usually built on circumstances rather than on any admission: who packed the bag, whether the traveller was paid, how the trip was arranged, whether the route was unusual, what the phone shows about the arrangement.

Cases where the defence is real and provable are more common than people assume. Couriers recruited through messaging apps are told they are carrying something else. Travellers are asked to take a package for someone met en route. Parcels are addressed to a person who ordered nothing. In each of them the evidentiary work is the same: reconstruct how the object came into the person's hands, obtain the correspondence in full rather than in the extracts the investigator chose, and identify who actually organised the movement.

Substances that are ordinary prescription medicines in Europe, the United States or Asia are controlled in Russia. Preparations containing codeine, pseudoephedrine, tramadol, certain sleep and anxiety medications, and medical cannabis products in any form fall into this category. Bringing them in a suitcase, with a foreign prescription and no intention of doing anything wrong, is charged under Article 229.1 with the same sentencing ranges as anything else.

These cases turn on the absence of criminal intent, on documentary proof of a genuine medical need, on the quantity being consistent with personal treatment, and on how the substance was declared or not declared at the border. They are defensible, and they are also entirely avoidable — anyone travelling to Russia with prescribed medication should check it against the Russian controlled substances list before they fly.

These cases are made at the border, and border procedure is written down. Customs inspection has to be documented, the traveller has the right to be present when their belongings are opened, attesting witnesses are required, and the item has to be sealed and identified at the point of seizure. In transit and postal cases the chain of custody spans several facilities and several handovers.

Every one of those steps generates a document, and gaps between the documents are where cases are lost by the prosecution. Obtaining the complete customs file — not just the extracts in the criminal case — is standard work for us in any Article 229.1 instruction.