Hong Kong police have arrested two tourists from Spain who were found with HK$120 million (US$15.3 million) worth of cocaine in a hotel room, and the pair allegedly conspired with a transnational criminal organization to steal from the city. It was announced that he was suspected of smuggling drugs.
The two men, a 47-year-old Dominican man and a 44-year-old Colombian man, hold Spanish passports and were arrested last Friday after police found 132kg of cocaine in their hotel room in Yau Ma Tei. he said on Sunday.
The drugs were broken into 109 bricks, police said, adding that officers also found two bags containing disjointed drug parcels inside the tourist’s suitcase.
Superintendent Wilson Tam Wai-shun of the military’s drug enforcement agency said the suspects appeared to be working for a multinational syndicate that smuggled drugs and recruited foreign nationals for short-term stays in the city.
“This is the largest quantity of suspected cocaine our forces have seized so far this year,” he said.
“We realized that the syndicate used guerrilla tactics, meaning they carefully selected tourists to traffic drugs into their suitcases in order to hide their true identity as drug traffickers. ”
Tam said both suspects flew from Spain to Hong Kong late last month on an itinerary that included a stopover in London.
He said the drugs had been stored in the hotel room since early February, adding that officers were investigating how much of the cocaine had already been sold.
The two suspects are in police custody and are scheduled to appear in Kowloon City Court on Monday morning.
Last month, forces seized 2.6kg of suspected cocaine in an apartment in a private housing complex in Changsha Bay and arrested a 28-year-old man in connection with the incident.
Police said at the time that the estimated street value of the captured items was more than HK$3.1 million.
The amount of cocaine seized by police and customs last year amounted to 3,537kg, an increase of 55.7% from the 2,271kg seized in 2022.