HONG KONG: Hong Kong customs officers have arrested two men after seizing an estimated HK$130 million (537 million baht) worth of cocaine in the city's largest airfreight bust of the drug in 20 years.
Officials needed firefighters to help them extract the 110 kilogramme haul hidden in two hydraulic devices that arrived from Brazil.
The case was the first involving drugs hidden in heavy hydraulic equipment, and the operation prevented a large amount of cocaine entering the local market.
A director, 51, and secretary, 50, of an engineering firm were detained last Saturday as customs officers investigated a suspicious freight consignment which had arrived four days earlier at the Hong Kong International Airport cargo terminal.
Customs officers later found 55kg of cocaine in each of the two 2.7-metre-long hydraulic devices - each weighing 1,500kg - which were sealed inside a hidden compartment.
"The drug traffickers had even wrapped lead, steel and metal over the hidden drugs. This seemingly perfect method to hide the drugs did in fact make our discovery more difficult," Lee Kam-wing, head of the customs drug investigation bureau, said.
As the welding of the equipment to hide the cocaine was nearly seamless, and customs officers were unable to easily crack it open for inspection, firefighters had to be called in to retrieve the drugs from inside.
Officer said that because of the coronavirus pandemic many drug smugglers had switched from trafficking via travellers to using parcels and cargo consignments.
They said the consignment first raised suspicions because of its origin in Brazil, a high-risk drug trafficking country, while the consignee company's address was also incomplete, and the engineering firm was only set up last year.
"Plus, South America is not a place where large-scale hydraulic devices are usually produced," Cheung Tin-ho, senior customs officer at the airport, said. "Therefore, customs officers used high penetration X-ray to inspect the [devices] and found some abnormal images."
In Hong Kong, trafficking in a dangerous drug has a maximum penalty of life in prison and a HK$5 million fine.
The latest case was the third this year in which customs prevented large amounts of cocaine from entering the local market.
In February, customs seized about 80kg of suspected cocaine from a transshipment container at the Kwai Chung Customhouse Cargo Examination Compound.
A month later, officers seized around 54kg of cocaine and about 700 grams of crack cocaine with an estimated market value of about HK$73 million, as customs uncovered drug manufacturing and packaging paraphernalia inside a flat in Sai Kung.