businessman, Z Vl hal

Vanuatu

Vila's big drug bust

. . • i .

VANUATU has been identified as part of the heroin route be tween Asia and Australia fol lowing drug seizures in both Sydney and Port Vila. The seizures, worth more than SA6O million revealed that the heroin SAhU million, revealed that the heroin apparently was carried m a mini-bus by Ship to Pori Vila, then transhipped by container to Sydney.

For reasons neither the Vanuatu oolice nor the Australian Federal Police Sn determine sS auamides of he

Tere aICdW “eft in

theZini bus Vanuatu nohce sav a local

businessman, Z Vl hal

been charged with offences relating to the drug smuggling. The quantity of the drugs found in the mini-bus was compa ratively small about 800 grams, with a street value of less than SUSI million.

Vanuatu’s deputy police commissioner

has been quoted as saying that Vanuatu has been used as a staging post for ship ments of heroin to Australia.

That route may now be broken follow

ing the arrests in Sydney and Port Vila.

Australian police believe they have pene trated one of Hong Kong’s most impor tant triad gangs following the seizure of

the 50 kilogram shipment in Sydney.

The operation against the drug runners

was dearly well-organised.

It seems that the shipment was orga nised by the Big Circle triad gang in Hong Kong after they had imported the

drugs from Thailand. Fifty-six premises

were raided in Hong Kong and five men arrested. The heroin then went to Vanuatu where it was loaded on board the Hong Kong-registered ship Nimos and arrived in Sydney in the first week of May, according to the Australian police. Then homes and restaurants in Sydney and Melbourne were raided where several Asian men were captured,

along with handguns and cash, police

have alleged.

The Australian Federal Police officer

in charge of the operation, Superinten

dent Cliff Foster, said the raids followed months of surveillance. He said the arrests had dented the image and finan cial backbone of the Big Circle Gang, which rivals the 14K Triads.

“We’re alleging that two of them were probably just below the top man. They

were wholesalers. They were actually going to sell the drugs that gives us reason to believe we’ve hit the top,” said

Superintendent Foster.

The discovery of the drugs which had come via Vanuatu had been preceded on May 2 when two Asian men were arrested in Sydney after 10.3 kg of he roin had been found in a suitcase in a

Qantas jet cargo hold.

The drugs which allegedly were ship

ped aboard Nimos were found in a re frigerator in a house in an inner Sydney suburb. The heroin was high grade and almost pure.

Meanwhile, drug enforcement agen cies fear a flood of heroin into Australia after a record crop in Asia’s Golden Triangle. Burmese sources estimate this year’s crop at 4.5 tonnes of heroin that is three times the crop yield of last year. □