This was reported by the South China Morning Post, following a press conference held on Tuesday. The value of the record catch is about 86 million Hong Kong dollars, or about 10 million euros, Chief Inspector Lee Man-lok and Assistant Inspector Wun Chiu-yue said, after which they showed the contraband.
The ketamine was hidden in an air shipment of 12 boxes of electric drills from the Netherlands, which had been sent to Hong Kong International Airport via Taiwan.
‘suspicion’
Five men were arrested in a staged operation in which customs officers pretended to be deliverers and delivered the shipment Monday to a factory building in the Tai Kok Tsui neighborhood of the Kowloon district. The shipment of twelve boxes containing the electric drills was selected for inspection. According to Wun, this happened because it is not common for such equipment to be shipped from our country to the city, because the products in the Netherlands are normally much more expensive.
Hong Kong airport.
ANP/HH
“Our investigation revealed that there was no information identifying the recipient and sender of the goods,” he said at the press conference. “That aroused our suspicions, so we decided to carry out a check.” During that inspection, conducted on Monday, customs officials at the airport found that eight of the boxes contained 200 bags of ketamine weighing a total of 200 kilograms.
‘Ambush’
Lee indicated that three controlled deliveries had already been arranged since May 6, but they were all canceled because the man allegedly authorized by the recipient could not be contacted, or because this man claimed he was not available to deliver. to pick up the shipment. “We are aware that the drug smuggling syndicate used this tactic to test whether it was an ambush by the authorities,” Lee explained.
On Monday around noon, a fourth delivery took place at a factory building belonging to Tai Kok Tsui, where a 45-year-old Vietnamese man collected the shipment outside. The man, who turned out not to have a permit to work in Hong Kong anyway, was arrested. At the same time, a 44-year-old man arrived in a car, picked up two of the boxes and drove away. Customs officers followed the car to a storage area, where a 62-year-old man joined the man in his 40s.
When the two Hong Kong men took the two boxes into the property, customs officers rushed in and arrested the individuals. Fifty kilograms of ketamine was found in the boxes in the building, as well as 350 grams of heroin. Customs assume that the building has been used for drug storage for a long time. Elsewhere, customs subsequently found another 150 kilos of the hard drugs. It is not known whether Dutch suspects are also in the picture.