Hong Kong customs seizes liquid cocaine worth HK$490 million disguised as white wine in shipment from Brazil in biggest bust of the drug in 20 years
Each of the 37 boxes was supposed to have carried four three-litre white wine bags.
Tsang said samples tested positive for cocaine.
“A total of 444kg of suspected liquid cocaine was discovered in the 37 boxes. The estimated street value of the haul is about HK$490 million,” he said.
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Senior superintendent Wong Ho-yin of the same bureau said the haul was the biggest for liquid cocaine since records began more than 20 years ago.
Plain-clothes officers from the bureau sent the container to a designated location in Yuen Long on December 19 as part of their operation, but no one turned up to collect it.
The container was returned to a Kwai Chung yard run by a logistics company and placed under round-the-clock surveillance by customs officers while waiting for instructions from its consignee.
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On Monday last week, a 50-year-old man suddenly turned up at the Kwai Chung location to collect the cargo.
A truck that transported the container to an outdoor car park in Tsing Yi was tracked by plain-clothes officers in unmarked cars. But no one opened the container and collected the goods.
After gathering evidence, customs officers arrested a 38-year-old man in Yuen Long and the 50-year-old man in Kwai Chung on Saturday and Sunday, respectively.
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Tsang said the younger man was allegedly responsible for arranging maritime transport to deliver the cargo from Brazil to Hong Kong, while the other was accused of helping collect and store the illegal substance.
The pair were still being held for questioning as of Monday afternoon. In Hong Kong, trafficking in a dangerous drug is punishable by up to life in jail and a HK$5 million fine.
The assistant superintendent said the investigation revealed the consignment was intended for the city’s underground market to meet the festive season demand.
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“We believe the drug trafficking syndicate tried to take advantage of the busy logistics services before the Christmas and New Year holidays to smuggle the narcotic into the city and evade detection,” Tsang said.
He said the department would exchange intelligence with overseas law enforcement agencies.
He did not rule out further arrests and said an investigation to determine the origin of the illegal drug and the cargo’s consignor and consignee was under way.
Hong Kong customs seizes drugs worth HK$4.4 billion in first 11 months of year
Customs officers confiscated more than 8.4 tonnes of illegal drugs worth HK$4.4 billion in the first 11 months of 2023, a record for any single year over the past two decades.
The previous annual record was the 6.9 tonnes of narcotics seized over the whole of 2022.
Figures showed customs officers seized 1.5 tonnes of cocaine worth HK$1.46 billion between January and November in 2023, an increase of 118 per cent from 688kg recorded in the same period the year before.