Big haul: Amizul (front, centre) with other senior Johor Customs officials showing the cocaine seized at the Port of Tanjung Pelepas.
JOHOR BARU: Drug syndicates are using a local transit port to ship cocaine to other countries, including the United States and China.
It is learnt that since December last year, the Customs Department has made three major cocaine busts involving cargo containers marked as frozen seafood or fresh onions.
To date, the seizures, totalling more than 130kg of cocaine, are valued at about RM32mil.
The latest seizure occurred on Oct 1 when, based on information received, the Customs Department detained a 12m container marked as frozen shrimp.
Johor Customs Director Amizul Izmeer Mohd Sohaimin said they found 62 plastic packets containing white powder, believed to be cocaine, during the seizure of a container at Port of Tanjung Pelepas (PTP) at 11.15am.
He said the drugs, weighing 60.2kg, were worth about RM12mil.
“They hid the drugs inside the air conditioner’s compressor unit outside the container.
The container, which was carrying around 19 tonnes of shrimp from India, was in transit to Miami in the United States,” he said during a press conference, adding that the seizure was based on intelligence gathered over a month.
He said the container had arrived at the port just a few days before the seizure.
Asked about arrests, he said everything was still under investigation and they were liaising with their foreign counterparts regarding the case.
Amizul Izmeer said investigations were being carried out under Section 39B (1)(a) of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952.
In May, the department made a cocaine bust at PTP where Customs officers seized 51kg worth RM10.3mil from a container marked as fresh onions.
The container was being shipped from China to Sarawak.
The drugs were also hidden inside the container’s air-conditioning compressor.
Prior to that, in December last year, the department seized RM10mil worth of drugs inside a container’s compressor at the same port.
The container, marked as frozen seafood, was heading to China from South America.
Security sources are still investigating if all three cases involve the same drug syndicate due to the similar modus operandi used.
