Judicial authorities yesterday said they had cooperated with Malaysian police to break a drug smuggling ring, leading to the arrest of 10 suspects in Malaysia.
Wu Shih-hsien (吳世賢), a counter-narcotics official at the Ministry of Justice’s Investigation Bureau, told a press conference that agents from the bureau and Malaysian police broke up a smuggling ring in which Taiwanese and Malaysian drug smugglers exchanged different drugs between the countries.
Wu said a Chinese Malaysian man surnamed Yeh, who was suspected of procuring ketamine from China and India, had managed to bring the drug into Taiwan via Malaysia.
The ketamine was delivered by air express to a Taiwanese woman surnamed Lee, Wu said, adding that Lee and her family produced Erimin and sold it to Yeh.
The official said that while ketamine is popular in Taiwan, Erimin is selling well in Malaysia.
Lee, who opened a restaurant in Kuala Lumpur to provide a cover for her drug smuggling operations, shipped Erimin to Malaysia as cargo, claiming the delivery involved chairs and tables for her restaurant, Wu said.
A few months ago, Lee purchased 60 plastic mannequins in Taichung, which alerted agents to the possibility that she might be preparing for another drug shipment.
After agents determined that Lee had shipped the mannequins to Kuala Lumpur in a cargo box on July 22, which was expected to arrive at Kuala Lumpur’s Kelang Port earlier this month, they notified Malaysian police, Wu said.
Lee, her boyfriend, her daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend were heading to Kuala Lumpur on Aug. 8 to pick up the shipment at the harbor.
Malaysian police launched their operation last Thursday. In the raid, police seized a total of 500,000 Erimin pills in the mannequins and 345,000 more in a warehouse used by Yeh. Police also seized 15kg of ketamine in the warehouse, which was reportedly ready for shipment to Lee in Taiwan.
Yeh, four Malaysians, Lee, three of her family members and a man from Singapore were arrested in the crackdown, Wu said.
The drugs seized have a street value of about NT$30 million (US$100,000), he said.
Ketamine and Erimin are mostly sold in nightclubs in both countries, the official said.
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