Hong Kong:
Hong Kong police announced a record-breaking 700 kilogramme cocaine seizure on Sunday with officers suspecting the enormous shipment was smuggled into the city on speedboats.
The bust is the biggest in the territory in practically a decade and netted some HK$930 million ($119.6 million) worth of cocaine.
Authorities say the collapse of international travel for the duration of the coronavirus pandemic has forced smugglers to make riskier bulk shipments alternatively of employing drug mules travelling by means of airports.
Police mentioned the bust was created on Friday when officers intercepted a man with a trolley in the Fo Tan industrial district and identified 150 bricks of cocaine in cardboard boxes.
Another 492 bricks have been later identified in an industrial developing and an apartment in the very same district, major to the arrest of two males aged 19 and 25.
“We believe (the drugs) were transported via long-range shipping to waters near Hong Kong from their source area in South America and then smuggled in by illegal speedboats,” senior superintendent Ng Kwok-cheung told reporters.
“We found a lot of water-proof bags that were still wet at the scene and all the cocaine bricks were carefully wrapped in plastic,” he added.
Police mentioned Hong Kong’s prior record cocaine seizure was 649 kilogrammes found by customs in 2012.
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