Vietnam cops bust gang using mobile labs to make Ecstasy
HANOI: Vietnamese cops have smashed a multi-million- dollar drug ring that pumped out ecstasy pills from mobile labs, police and state media said yesterday, in what could be the country’s largest ever narcotics bust.
Fifteen people were arrested including the alleged ringleader Van Kinh Duong, who used live video or social media to monitor his labs as they moved house-to-house to evade authorities in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.
The labs churned out ‘ E’ and other synthetic drugs, according to Cong An Thanh Pho Ho Chi Minh City yesterday, the southern hub’s official newspaper.
The pills were transported from Ho Chi Minh to Hanoi in suitcases of 5,000 pills weighing 50 kilogrammes. Report
Photographs showed bins full of white powder, cooking flasks and scales, along with suitcases stuffed with ecstasy pill packets.
“The pills were transported from Ho Chi Minh to Hanoi in suitcases of 5,000 pills weighing 50 kilogrammes,” the report said.
Police confiscated more than 500,000 ecstasy pills, 120 kilogrammes of unidentified powder — together worth an estimated US$ 8.8 million — and US$ 450,000 in cash at the bust in Ho Chi Minh City.
Since the start of 2016, the network had produced around 300 kilogrammes of narcotics, according to the report.
A police officer in Ho Chi Minh City, requesting anonymity, told AFP the sting followed a year-long surveillance operation.
The bust is believed to be the ‘ biggest ever’ in communist Vietnam, the officer added.
Vietnam has some of the toughest drug laws in the world, handing out heavy penalties to drug convicts.
Anyone found possessing more guilty than of 600 grammes of heroin, or more than 20 kilogrammes of opium can face the death penalty.
This week, five heroin traffickers were sentenced to death after police accused them of smuggling 102 kilogrammes of drugs into Vietnam from Laos. — AFP