A slight fright for the sale of anabolic steroids
Six years for anabolicsIrina Vlasova, Gazeta
from 23.12.2008.
The Kuibyshev Court of St. Petersburg sentenced three young people to suspended prison terms yesterday for organizing an online store that had been selling banned sports medicines for three years.
According to the press service of the State Drug Control Department for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region, the group included young people born in 1983-1985. One of them at the time of the store's organization in 2006 was a student of the St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University, the second was a cadet of the Makarov State Maritime Academy.
The court found that the income from the criminal activity of the online store of anabolic steroids amounted to more than 8 million rubles. On the store's website, it was possible to place an order for any prohibited drug, after which it was necessary to pay for the goods according to the price list. Within two weeks, the order was delivered to the specified address. The drugs in this store were bought by residents of not only many regions of Russia, but also CIS countries.
Drug control officers, after conducting a series of searches, seized more than 4 thousand ampoules and packages of anabolic steroids, computer equipment, postal receipts, mobile phones and numerous SIM cards to them. The defendants in the case were found guilty of committing crimes under Article 234 part 3 (illegal trafficking of potent or poisonous substances for sale, committed by an organized group) and Article 171 part 2 (illegal entrepreneurship committed by an organized group) of the Criminal Code. The court found 76 episodes of the sale of potent substances.
It was also proved during the court sessions that the criminals, fearing exposure, actively used elements of conspiracy and forged documents in their activities. One of the accused was sentenced to conditional imprisonment for a term of seven years, the other to conditional imprisonment for a term of six and a half years, the third to six years of suspended imprisonment. The total amount of the fine imposed on the convicts is about 160 thousand rubles.
As David Chichua, director of the Center for Innovative Sports Technologies of the Moscow Department of Physical Education and Sports, told the Gazeta correspondent, the huge danger of anabolic steroids lies not only in the fact that the results of top-level sports are distorted, but also in the fact that students of sports schools get used to these supplements. "Coaches are in a hurry to raise athletes and champions, because the salary of a coach directly depends on the level of their wards," said David Chichua. "The problem is super–urgent, and if regional laboratories do not appear all over the country, which together with the central doping control laboratory will also check youth sports, we will get a young generation affected by these additives by the time the Youth Olympic Games begin in 2010."
In recent months, the Center for Innovative Sports Technologies has revealed uncontrolled and illiterate use of steroids in many sports schools in Moscow.
Portal "Eternal youth" www.vechnayamolodost.ru23.12.2008