Criminal Code (Law No. 456-VI).

Criminal Law establishes general principles of criminal liability, clearly defining conduct and the requirements for liability and penal responsibility. It also regulates liability for specific groups, including children, corporations, and accomplices, and provides a structured system of defenses such as self-defense, necessity, provocation, mistake, and mental incapacity. The criminal legislation is based on the principles of legality, equality of man and citizen before the law, guilty responsibility, justice and humanism.
The basis for criminal liability is the commission of an act that contains all the elements of a crime provided for by the Criminal Code. Crimes committed within the internal waters, territorial sea or airspace of Turkmenistan are considered to be committed on the national territory.
This Criminal Code punishes the following criminal offences: (a) organization of illegal migration, carrying out entrepreneurial activity without registration and special permission (license) in cases where such permission (license) is mandatory, or in violation of licensing conditions, obstruction of legitimate business activities; (b) illegal felling, as well as damage stopping the growth of trees and shrubs in forests of the first group or in protected areas of forests, intentional destruction or damage of forest areas or other natural objects by forest fires; (c) extraction of fish, aquatic animals and other aquatic species, including aquatic plants; (d) illegal cultivation of prohibited plants containing narcotic substances; (e) illegal extraction, acquisition, sale of snake venom, hunting of animals and birds, committed in violation of established hunting rules; (f) pollution of internal marine or territorial waters, as well as open sea waters; (g) contamination, pollution or other damage to land with harmful products of economic or other activities due to violation of the rules for handling pesticides, fertilizers, plant growth stimulants and other hazardous chemical or biological substances during their storage, use and transportation, unauthorized seizure, plowing and sowing of lands in the use of daikhan associations, daikhan farms and other land users, transfer of a land plot by an official in violation of the right of ownership of the land, including the transfer of land plots owned by the state for lease or use without registration in the prescribed manner; (h) ecocide, that is mass destruction of flora or fauna, pollution of air, land or water resources, as well as the commission of other actions that have caused or are capable of causing an environmental disaster or emergency environmental situation; (i) illegal use of another person's trademark, service mark, registered company name, place of origin of goods, under-measuring, under-weighting, large-scale short-changing, misleading information regarding the consumer properties, quality of goods (work, services) or deceiving consumers in other ways by persons, illegal production or storage for the purpose of selling strong alcoholic beverages; and (j) pollution, clogging, depletion of surface or underground waters, drinking water sources, or other changes in their natural properties, the theft of water resources by digging the banks of irrigation canals, opening sluices, using special devices, as well as other forms and methods of water theft.