Police Make Largest Cocaine Bust Since 2011

Police say they have made their largest cocaine seizure in a decade, seizing over 700 kilos of cocaine in Sha Tin, with a street value of about HK$900 million.

Two men, aged 19 and 25, have been arrested.

Senior Superintendent of the police's narcotics bureau, Ng Kwok-cheung, said officers had intercepted a man outside a Fo Tan industrial building on Friday, finding 165 kilos of cocaine on a trolley. Police then found 500 kilos of the drug inside a unit at the building.

The next day officers stopped another man and seized 46 kilos of identically packed cocaine, this time inside a Sha Tin residential building.

The force says the pandemic has forced drug smuggling gangs to change their strategy. It said previously gangs had tended to bring drugs into Hong Kong in small batches but now travelling restrictions had forced them to smuggle in bulk.

The two men have been charged with drug trafficking. They will appear at the Sha Tin Magistracy on Monday.