Thai Authorities Bust Drug Convoy Transporting One Billion Baht Worth of Crystal Meth

 

BANGKOK – Police chief Chakthip Chaijinda, has told Thai media at a press conference that 10 million methamphetamine pills and nearly half a tonne of crystal meth branded as Chinese tea has been seized from a convoy of four vehicles.

The drugs — worth around 1 billion baht on the local market — were being ferried along the “narcotics corridor”, from Myanmar’s Shan State through Chiang Rai to Bangkok and then south to Malaysia.

Police followed the four cars from Ayutthaya, which is a key warehousing site for the drugs which pour from Myanmar’s meth labs through the Golden Triangle.

They made the bust once the convoy had reached downtown Bangkok late on Thursday, police said, finding crystal meth concealed in Chinese-branded tea packages and the pill bundles.

“Six suspects who were paid to transport drugs were arrested,” national police chief Gen Chakthip Chaijinda told a new conference. Some of the drugs were “destined for foreign countries”.

“They belong to the Northern Wa Group,” he said.

The ethnic group is based in Myanmar’s Shan State which jointly oversees the world’s second-largest drug producing region, the notorious “Golden Triangle” border zone that encompasses parts of Myanmar, Laos, Thailand and China.