HCM City Customs seize over 14kg of drugs

Thousands of tablets of drugs were discovered in gift packages. Photo: T.H

Through implementing the first period of special project ME319, in two days (25/6 and 26/6), the Anti-drug Enforcement Unit of Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department chaired and coordinated with the HCM City Express Department, Unit 6 - Anti-Smuggling and Investigation Department -General Department of Vietnam Customs and PC04 - Ho Chi Minh City Police to check 7 imported parcels. Through physical inspection, the competent force seized over 14kg of synthetic drugs, including MDMA (ecstasy) and Ketamine.

The above 7 parcels were sent from France, Germany and Thailand to Ho Chi Minh City through international postal services and express delivery, disguised as personal non-commercial gifts.

In the process of examining those 7 parcels, the customs authorities had detected and seized more than 13kg of synthetic drugs that were MDMA in form of tablets (ecstasy) and 1kg of Ketamine.

The loudspeaker was full of drugs.

Those people used sophisticated method to hide the above drugs in goods packages, such as: pressing tightly in the walls of carton boxes, in cloth hangers, at the bottom of water purifiers, in the foot massage machine, and in the electronic speaker. The competent force must disassemble each machine part or pry each drug tablet out of the package.

In order to escape competent force’s notice and avoid responsibility when being detected, those people in the international drug line have used the trick of using fake information of consignees on the bill of lading and parcels. If the parcel was successfully completed customs clearance, those people would find ways to receive drugs because goods were sent in the form of express delivery.

Currently, the Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department is expanding the investigation.