Ukrainian police seize 600 kilos of heroin
April 1, 2019
Two police raids in Ukraine yielded a massive find of heroin with a black market value of $50 million (€44.5 million) on Sunday, said the chief of Ukraine's national police, Sergiy Knyazev. Officers seized some 600 kilograms (1323 pounds) of the drug.
"I have never seen so much heroin seized by the Ukrainian police," he wrote in a Facebook post, alongside images from the scene.
"We have detained four people, one Moldovan citizen, one citizen of Turkey, and two Macedonians," he added.
Police discovered the first 100 kilograms overnight after detaining an alleged member of a smuggling gang outside Kyiv. The drugs were apparently stashed in a "professionally-equipped cubby hole" of a luxury car, which the investigators only found after a three-hour search.
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Authorities made the second and much larger discovery of the 500 kilogram stash later on Sunday.
Ukraine is an important transit country for drugs coming to Europe from Afghanistan and Russia. Last week, Ukraine's SBU intelligence agency seized some 257 kilograms of cocaine in the Black Sea port city of Odessa.
dj/se (AFP, Interfax, Ukrainski Novini)