Chinese man nicked for carrying 14kg of drugs into Vietnam
Thursday, March 05, 2015, 16:55 GMT+7
Vietnamese police have arrested a 48-year-old Chinese man who illegally transported 14kg of synthetic drugs into Vietnam in a taxi cab on Tuesday.
>> Three condemned to death for smuggling 11kg of heroin in Vietnam Police in the northern Vietnamese province of Quang Ninh on Wednesday said they have detained a Chinese national, whose name is translated into Vietnamese as Tran Hoat Toan, who comes from the Chinese province of Guangxi. At 11:00 am on March 3, police officers pulled over a suspicious car for an examination.
Police then discovered a handbag hidden on the car floor, behind the driver seat.
On searching the handbag, police found 15 small plastic bags containing methamphetamine, a kind of synthetic drug, weighing 14kg in total. According to national broadcaster Vietnam Television and the Vietnam News Agency, the weight of the drug is higher, at 20kg. Toan was escorted to a police station where he said he accidentally met a Chinese man named A Si in a dance hall in the Chinese city of Dongxing on February 26. A Si then hired Toan to carry the bags of drug to Vietnam for 10,000 Chinese yuan (roughly US$1,600) and deliver them to a person named Binh, Toan said, adding that he agreed to the deal. On March 2, Toan received the said handbag from A Si in Dongxing and hired a boatman to transport it to Mong Cai. A day later, Toan got the bag back from the boatman at a café opposite the Dai Nam Hotel in Mong Cai. Next, Toan hired a taxi to deliver the drug and was arrested in the process, he told investigators. Provincial police are further investigating the case.
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Under Article 194 of the Vietnamese Penal Code, twenty years of imprisonment, life imprisonment or capital punishment can be given to those who are convicted of illegally stockpiling, transporting, trading in or appropriating heroin or cocaine weighing one hundred grams or more. The same penalties are also given to those who commit the crimes in one of the following circumstances: opium resin, marijuana resin or coca plasma weighing five kilograms or more; marijuana leaves, flowers, fruit or coca leaves weighing 75 kilograms or more; dried poppy fruit weighing 600 kilograms or more; fresh poppy fruit weighing 150 kilograms or more; other narcotic substances in solid form weighing 300 grams or more or in liquid form measuring 750 milliliters or more |
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