On October 9, the Hong Kong Customs announced that the Hong Kong Customs cracked a major maritime drug trafficking case in September. On September 27, about 500 kg of suspected cannabis flowers with an estimated market value of about $130 million (HK $) were seized from containers in the inspection yard of the Kwai Chung Customs Building, and three people including staff of a logistics company and a driver were arrested.

Through risk assessment and intelligence analysis, customs officers earlier locked a container from Canada that reported carrying more than 500 bags of soybeans, and found that its shipper was an overseas clothing company, which had nothing to do with the nature of the cargo. In addition, some parts of North America have legalized cannabis, allowing criminals to smuggle drugs into Hong Kong under the guise of food, so customs officers detained the goods for investigation.

The investigation found that the size of the nylon bag packaging “soybeans” was different, some suspected to contain other items, customs officers opened it and found that there were several bags of vacuum packaging herbs, which were confirmed to be positive for cannabis after testing. In the end, customs officers found 83 packages of suspected cannabis flowers weighing about 500 kg in the entire shipment.

Tsang Kin-bang, commander of the first narcotics Investigation Unit of the Narcotics Investigation Bureau of the Customs and Excise Department, said that this case is the second time that the Customs has cracked a major case involving cannabis drugs this year, successfully blocking the flow of a large amount of drugs into the Hong Kong market and dealing a heavy blow to the drug syndicates involved.

Tsang said that from January to September this year, Hong Kong Customs had successfully seized about 2,600 kilograms of cannabis with a market value of HK $540 million, an increase of more than 80% over the same period last year and more than the total amount of last year.