Article 214: Violating the Rules for Moving Goods Across the Customs Border
Article 214 of the Criminal Code of Georgia establishes liability for violating the rules connected with the movement of goods across the customs border of Georgia. If you or your business partner has come under investigation over a customs violation, this page explains what this particular norm says: which acts are crimes, which features distinguish its parts from one another, and what punishment each part carries. Every detail on this page is taken from the text of the article itself; the details of customs procedures and other matters this article does not regulate are determined by other legislation.
The article consists of three parts, and the boundary between them depends on the quantity and the nature of the goods being moved. That is why the first check of any accusation concerns exactly these two criteria.
What Conduct Is Criminal Under the First Part
The text of the first part treats as a crime the transfer in or out across the customs border of Georgia of items moving in large quantity, when committed in violation of the established rules. The article names four forms of such violation directly:
- by evading customs control;
- secretly from customs control;
- by deceptive use of a document or of a means of identification;
- by entering false data into a customs declaration.
This list matters for the defense: the prosecution must establish that the transfer in or out was committed through one of these forms. Note also that the first part concerns items moving in large quantity — the criterion of large quantity is not numerically defined within the article itself and is established by other legislation.
The Second Part: Especially Large Quantity
The second part attaches a different punishment to the same act when it is committed with goods in especially large quantity. The form of the conduct remains the same — transfer in or out by evading customs control, secretly, through a deceptive document or false data in a declaration — and only the gradation of the quantity changes. The official boundaries of especially large quantity, like those of large quantity, are not stated in the text of this article and are defined by other norms. For the defense this is often the decisive issue: drawing the line between the parts correctly translates directly into the upper limit of the punishment.