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Bali customs thwart drug precursor smuggling attempt to Australia
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Customs and Excise director general Heru Pambudi (center), accompanied by the Australian Embassy's Southeast Asia regional director Chris Waters (third left), present dozens of bottles seized as evidence at a press conference on Monday. The bottles contain drug precursors and were seized in January during an attempt to smuggle them to Australia via Bali. (JP/Ni Komang Erviani)
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ustoms officials at Bali's I Gusti Ngurah Rai International Airport have thwarted an attempt to smuggle a batch of drug precursors from South Korea to Australia, seizing at least 600,000 tablets containing pseudoephedrine, the raw material for producing methamphetamine and ecstasy.
Customs and excise director general Heru Pambudi told a press conference on Monday that they had received a tip from the Australian Border Force (ABF) and followed up from there. "The ABF conveyed the information after they received intelligence that a package was being sent from South Korea to Australia via Bali containing raw material to produce methamphetamine and MDMA [ecstasy], but was being declared as health food," said Heru.
He said the smuggling attempt was foiled in January, but that the agencies had agreed to announce it only today, pending the ABF’s ongoing investigation.
The package contained six boxes of a total 100 bottles, each bottle filled with 1,000 tablets containing pseudoephedrine.
Meanwhile, Chris Waters, the Southeast Asia regional director at the Australian Embassy in Jakarta, said that a suspect had been arrested in the case, but declined to elaborate.
Waters appreciated the collaboration between the ABF and its Indonesian counterpart in uncovering the case.
"This outcome shows the successful synergy between Australian agencies working closely with Indonesian authorities to combat the threat of criminal groups attempting to ship drugs through Asia to Australia," he said. (swd)
