500 Unsafe Boilers Seized in Tashkent Region as Two Men Charged Over Fake Certificates

Officers from the Interior Ministry’s operational-investigation department, acting jointly with a unit attached to the Prosecutor General’s Office, have broken up a scheme to sell hundreds of substandard heating boilers in the Tashkent region, detaining two men and seizing equipment that investigators say posed a direct safety risk to buyers.

The operation was carried out in Yangiyul, a district town in Tashkent region. The two suspects — one an employee of a gas-supply organisation, the other a previously convicted entrepreneur with a prior record for tax evasion — are alleged to have conspired to source foreign-made heating boilers whose service life had expired, then sell them with forged conformity documents and certificates at $380 per unit.

Investigators caught the pair in the act of selling 120 boilers, a transaction valued at roughly $45,000. A subsequent search of one suspect’s home uncovered a further 500 heating appliances of various types, all imported from abroad, all failing to meet safety standards, and all stored illegally for future sale. The total stock intercepted therefore stands at 500 units, with the 120 already being sold forming part of that figure at the moment of arrest.

Criminal Charges and the Broader Safety Context

A criminal case has been opened under paragraphs (a) and (b) of part 2 of Article 276-11 of Uzbekistan’s Criminal Code, which covers the production, storage, transport for sale, or actual sale of goods, works or services that do not meet safety requirements. An investigation is under way.

Authorities used the case to renew a public warning: heating boilers and other appliances should be purchased only from authorised retailers that provide conformity certificates and warranty documentation, and installation and maintenance should be entrusted exclusively to qualified technicians.

The operation comes against a documented backdrop of danger. Eighteen people have previously died in Uzbekistan as a result of illegally sold heating boilers, in a separate episode in which decommissioned gas boilers written off in Germany were imported into the country and sold as new equipment. That history lends particular urgency to the Yangiyul seizure, which suggests the trade in unsafe heating equipment has not been fully suppressed.