The jakarta Globe, May 29, 2012
Indonesian authorities have made their biggest ecstasy bust in 10 years, seizing more than one million pills with a street value estimated at $45 million, officials and reports said Tuesday.
The drugs were found in a shipping container from China, a spokesman for the National Narcotics Agency, Sumirat Dwiyanto, told AFP.
“On Monday, around 1.4 million ecstasy pills in a 20-foot shipping container were discovered hidden under boxes of aquarium accessories,” he said.
“This is the biggest haul found in the last 10 years.”
Dwiyanto declined to put a value on the drugs.
Based on the street value of a single pill, the drugs were worth some Rp. 420 billion ($44.9 million).
After intercepting the drugs, narcotics officers followed a delivery truck from the port where the container had been delivered in Jakarta to a warehouse, later arresting eight Indonesians in connection with the haul.
Indonesia enforces stiff penalties including death by firing squad, for drug trafficking.
Agence France-Presse