Armenia’s SRC was part of operation to seize $45 million worth heroin batch
YEREVAN, July 30. /ARKA/. Armenia’s State Revenue Committee (SRC) said today it was part of an unprecedented operation designed by the law-enforcement agencies of several countries to disclose a smuggling of a large batch of heroin.
According to a SRC press release, in early July 2021, one of its units in charge of anti-smuggling operations, received information that a transnational organized criminal group, engaged in the illegal supply of heroin from Iran to the EU countries, planned to transit a large batch of heroin through the territories of Armenia, Georgia and Ukraine.
The SRC conveyed the information to the Prosecutor General of Armenia and agreements were reached with the Ukrainian and Georgian police on the joint conduct of the round-the-clock operational-search activities.
Armenia’s National Security Service was also involved in the operative-search work. As a result, the truck with heroin was followed by the law enforcement officers during the entire transit through the territory of Armenia.
The operation involved also the Russia border guards deployed in Armenia and the regional office of the US Department of Justice's Drug Enforcement Administration located in Tbilisi, Georgia. A representative of the anti-smuggling department of the Armenian State Revenue Committee was dispatched to Georgia and then to Ukraine.
On July 4, 2021, the truck with 20 tons of refractory bricks arrived from Iran to Armenia, which, according to the operational information received, was supposed to transport also heroin. Under the operational support of law enforcement officers of Armenia, Georgia and Ukraine, the truck travelled through the territory of Armenia and Georgia and arrived in the Georgian port of Poti, and from there by ship to the Ukrainian port of Chernomorsk.
Upon arrival at Chernomorsk, the truck headed for Kiev, where two members of the transnational organized criminal group - citizens of Turkey - rented a warehouse. On July 22, Ukrainian law enforcement officers, with the representatives of the anti-smuggling department of the Armenian SRC and the Georgian police, entered the warehouse, where they found 1,164 packages of heroin transported from Iran to Ukraine with a total weight of 368 kg.
The Turkish citizens were detained in Kiev on the same day. Another Turkish citizen, born in 1948, was detained in Kiev a few days later. An investigation is currently underway. The value of the discovered drug on the black market is estimated at about $45 million. -0-
