Bulgaria seizes heroin at border with Serbia
Bulgaria customs officials seized 95 kilograms of heroin Monday at the Kalotina border check point in a Turkish lorry trying to cross the Bulgaria-Serbian border, Bulgarian Customs Agency’s press office announced.
The customs officers discovered 182 packets with beige dustlike substance in the reserve tyres of the lorry, which has Turkish registration plates. After being taken away for testing, it was confirmed that the substance was heroin.
The heroin is thought to have a black market price of 11 million leva (about 8.21 million U.S. dollars) and the Turkish driver has been taken away for questioning.
Besides, the police in the district of Petrich seized about 700 kilograms of cannabis during operation on fighting growing and spreading of the drug, the press office of the Ministry of Interior Regional Police Directorate’s in the southwest city of Blagoevgrad said on Monday.
Bulgaria straddles routes of international drug smugglers and routinely seizes large amounts of drugs on its borders with Turkey to the south, Romania to the north and Serbia to the east.
Only in the last 20 days, a total of 173 kilograms of heroin has been discovered at different border crossings in Bulgaria. Over the last eight years, Bulgaria has confiscated over 21 tons of drugs, but it is certain that much more has slipped through.
September 14, 2009
Xinhua
