Officials found a record amount of 830 kilograms of hashish inside the trailer of a Lithuanian-registered truck at the checkpoint of Narva on the Estonian-Russian border on Thursday.
830 kg of hashish found in Lithuanian truck in Narva
27th February 2015, 15:37
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The officials took action after a sniffer dog had alerted them to the freezer trailer of the truck headed for Russia.
The prosecutor in charge of the case, Kristel Praun, said the narcotic substance was found inside a refrigerated trailer carrying a load of flowers that was adapted for the needs of transportation of contraband.
«The driver, a 48-year-old Lithuanian national, was arrested on the spot,» Praun said.
The prosecutor said the haul caught on the Estonian-Russian border on Thursday was undisputably the biggest individual consignment of narcotics ever seized in Estonia.
The substance has been weighed with packaging.
Rain Kuus, head of the investigation department at the Tax and Customs Board, said the amount of hashish seized yesterday is almost twice bigger than the 455 kilograms of narcotic substances that was seized altogether during 2014. Considering that a gram of hashish fetches up to 20 euros on the street, the market value of the haul seized on Thursday is 16.6 million euros and it would have sufficed to cause narcotic intoxication in more than 8 million people.
The prosecutor was about to seek custody for the driver on Friday, especially considering the fact that the truck with the illegal load was headed to Russia and there was reason to believe that the suspect will start to hide from investigation.