More Than One Ton of Heroin Was Seized and Destroyed in Almaty

As the Committee of Finance Monitoring under Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Finance press service reports, Almaty law enforcement officials have destroyed more than 1.1 tons of heroin. In terms of quantity, it is the second drug seizure in the world, according to the agency.

The drugs were seized during an international raid, which involved criminal police and customs officials from Germany, Russia, Belarus, Lithuania, Poland and Netherlands. Once the illegal drugs had been seized, they were destroyed by the officials of the Almaty Department on Economical Investigations in conjunction with the transport prosecutor’s office and under control of a special commission.

In October 2019 criminals brought to Kazakhstan a bunch of machine-cut marble from the Netherlands. While examining the shipment, customs officials found 2208 briquettes of heroin. The organized criminal group had been planning to move these drugs from Iran to the European Union.

After that, the shipment was sent to Germany under the control of undercover agents where a group of Turkish citizens has been arrested while they tried to get the shipment. Currently, the pretrial investigation is underway. 

In August, Kazakhstani law enforcement officials discovered a drug laboratory in Almaty. This is the biggest one in the country’s history, according to police.