Hong Kong seizes record 178 kilograms of narcotics

Packets of methamphetamine are displayed behind a cordon as officers from the Customs Drug Investigation Bureau stand guard in Hong Kong on December 17, 2019. (Illustration) ANTHONY WALLACE / AFP

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178 kilograms of methamphetamine, heroin and ketamine were found in soda bottles. This is the largest drug seizure for Hong Kong customs this year. And the health crisis has not reduced traffic, quite the contrary.

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With our correspondent in China, Stéphane Lagarde

The traffickers are full of imagination to try to escape the controls. This time, the drugs were in soft drink bottles. 305 bottles, themselves hidden in the middle of 1,000 boxes containing 10,000 others. The search took place last Thursday, reports the South China Morning Post .

Customs officials have taken over a factory in the Fanling district of Hong Kong's New Territories, near the border with mainland China. Methamphetamine, ketamine, heroin: the total amount of trafficking is approaching 170 million Hong Kong dollars, or nearly 18.5 million euros.

Two suspects were arrested while trying to move the merchandise. Aged 27 and 33, the two men are from South Asia. This operation is the most important seizure of the year according to investigators, but it is not the first.

A "  worrying situation  "

Health restrictions and viral pneumonia have even accelerated trafficking according to Chinese state media . Due to border closures and the shutdown of part of the maritime links, drugs are circulating more via air freight.

However, the plane is expensive so the mafias would try to pass more goods at a time, indicated Raymond Chou, the director of the narcotics office who considers the "  worrying situation  ".

The quantity of heroin and methamphetamine confiscated by the Hong Kong police during the first six months of the year has already exceeded all of the seizures of 2018 and 2019.

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  • Hong Kong
  • Drug
  • China

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