The Ho Chi Minh City People’s Court on Thursday condemned three Taiwanese men to death for illicitly transporting 489.6 kilograms of narcotics.

The three men were involved in drug trafficking from Cambodia to Vietnam and then China for consumption.

The trio are Huang Yen Sheng, 25, Kou Yi Hao, 33, and Yeh Chen Chia, 26.

Huang became acquainted with a man named Tuan Huu in Taiwan, according to their testimonies.

In January 2021, Huu shipped an electric motor stuffed with 30 kilograms of drugs to Ho Chi Minh City and asked Huang to transport it to Hanoi.

Huang divided the drugs into smaller bags weighing 100 grams each and hid them inside pig stomachs at a cold storage warehouse in Thuong Tin District, Hanoi. 

The pig stomachs were later mixed in with batches of frozen meat and transported to Cao Bang Province on the border with China.

Huang received VND400 million (US$17,113) for the shipment.

A month later, Huang transported another 90 kilograms of drugs to Cao Bang the same way and was paid VND700 million ($29,949).

In March 2021, Huu transferred an additional 180 kilograms of drugs stashed in six electric motors to Huang in a warehouse in Nha Be District, Ho Chi Minh City.

He employed Kou to assist Huang.

They successfully transferred 90 kilograms to one of Huu’s accomplices and kept the remaining 90 kilograms in a warehouse in Hanoi.

Huu delivered another 180 kilograms of drugs to Nha Be in May 2021.

At the time, Huang and Kou were in Hanoi, so they asked another person to receive the batch but did not tell him what the batch was.

After returning to Ho Chi Minh City, Huang and Kou took 30 kilograms of drugs from the shipment and gave them to Yeh, the third Taiwanese defendant, apparently under Huu’s instruction.

On May 19, 2021, Yeh picked up the drugs in a GrabCar and then asked the driver to take him to meet friends.

The Grab driver suspected Yeh had contraband and contacted local police who later found drugs in the car and seized an additional 150 kilograms of drugs from the warehouse in Nha Be District.

Police also confiscated nearly ten kilograms of drugs from the apartments rented by Huang and Kou and 90 kilograms from the warehouse in Hanoi.

In total, Huang and his accomplices transported nearly 480 kilograms of ketamine and 9.6 kilograms of methamphetamine between January and May 2021.

As for Huu, who currently lives in Taiwan, Vietnamese investigators have no specific information on his whereabouts and lack sufficient evidence to carry out an investigation into his wrongdoings.

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