CHIBA (TR) – Chiba Prefectural Police have arrested two men for smuggling stimulant drugs inside tequila bottles in what is the biggest drug bust of its kind this year, investigative sources revealed on Wednesday, reports NHK (Dec. 3).
On August 31, eight tequila bottles arriving by container ship at a port in Tokyo’s Shinagawa Ward were found to be filled with 1.3 kilograms of stimulant drugs in liquefied form. The shipment had originated in Mexico.
Police subsequently arrested a Eduardo Jorge Sandoval Rincon, a 42-year-old Mexican national, and a 38-year-old Japanese male on charges of smuggling. Both suspects have claimed that they did not know that the bottles contained stimulant drugs, according to the Yomiuri Shimbun (Dec. 3).
As a part of the investigation, Yokohama Customs and Chiba police also confirmed that approximately 1,000 tequila bottles of a 7,200-bottle shipment arriving at the Port of Yokohama in September contained 150 kilograms of the drug in the same form.
The estimated value of the contraband, which had been stored at a warehouse in Yokohama’s Tsurumi Ward, is 10.5 billion yen, making it the largest seizure of the drug in Japan this year.
