World's largest Ecstacy bust; 4.9 tons of pills
The world’s biggest haul of Ecstasy tablets has been found concealed in 3,000 tins of tomatoes, Australian police revealed today.Nearly five tons of the drug – with a street value of £205million – was discovered following raid on a ship which had sailed from Italy.
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Customs officials replaced the ecstasy with an inert substance and monitored the consignment but the arrests were brought closer two weeks ago when a coffee bean shipment carrying 330lb of cocaine was detected in Melbourne.
Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty said the drugs were part of a global syndicate and the seizures would be ‘a major disruption to transnational organised crime, both in this country and abroad.’
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‘There have been 185,000 telephone intercepts in this operation, there have been 400 members of the AFP deployed to this operation, there have been 10,000 hours of surveillance deployed to this operation to find the perpetrators of this world’s largest seizure and importation into our country,’ Commissioner Keelty said.
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‘It is classic organised crime and we have done our best to shut down the syndicate,’ he told reporters.
Commissioner Keelty said the syndicate was allegedly still able to traffic drugs even though it had lost the massive 4.9 tons shipment, underlining the apparent demand for illicit substances in Australia.
‘There are not many boardrooms in Australia where you would write off half a billion dollars worth of a commodity or a product and continue your business,’ he said.
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Customs chief executive Michael Carmody said the bust was the result of ‘small snippets of information.’
so ya, "RAVE-AH RAVE-AH!", in other news, hundreds of young adults dressed in bright, clashing fuzzy clothing and cheap plastic jewlery took to the streets in mass protest.
actually, the funniest part to me is that I've been listening to mid 90's rave music all morning