Police have confiscated more than 16 kg of methamphetamine bound for Vietnam from a guesthouse near Svay Rieng province’s Bavet City border checkpoint, an official said on Monday.
Acting on a tip from Vietnamese border authorities about a cross-border smuggling scheme, more than 20 Bavet City police officers raided Thai An guesthouse in the city on Sunday, said city police chief Keo Kong.
On Sunday morning, Vietnamese authorities had arrested two Vietnamese nationals—Nguyen Minh Tien, 19, and Pham Van Thuan, 24—and warned officials across the border about a possible Cambodian connection, Mr. Kong said.
The suspects’ identity cards were later found in the guesthouse in Cambodia by Bavet City police, along with the large quantity of drugs. A third suspect, also a Vietnamese national, was apprehended about 500 meters from the guesthouse, after the owner told authorities that one of the room’s guests had just left the building, Mr. Kong said.
He did not reveal the name of the suspect arrested in Cambodia.
“We confiscated more than 16 kg of meth. We will send it to the National Authority for Combating Drugs, and now provincial police are still questioning the suspect,” he said.
The suspect arrested in Bavet City will be questioned by Cambodian police, while Vietnamese authorities will handle Mr. Minh Tien and Mr. Van Thuan across the border, Mr. Kong said.
Meas Vyrith, secretary-general of the National Authority for Combating Drugs (NACD), said the case would require further investigation to discover the extent of the suspected drug trafficking ring they had just uncovered.
“This is a big case, and we don’t know how much they trafficked previously,” he said.
Mr. Vyrith attributed the Bavet City arrest to an agreement between Cambodia and Vietnam to share information related to cross-border drug crimes.
“We have a cooperation with each other: Sometimes they report [a drug crime] or we do,” he said.
The two countries signed a memorandum of understanding on cross-border drug crime enforcement in Phnom Penh late last month after NACD officials visited Hanoi to ask for money to fund a drug rehabilitation center in Sihanoukville.
