Two men were arrested in Phnom Penh’s Prek Pnov district on Saturday when they tried to sell 1 kg of heroin to an undercover police operative, police said Sunday.
The suspects, Nguyen Yong Toeng, 32, and Nguyen Yong Toey, 40, were arrested at their home in Prek Pnov commune’s Duong village after they arranged to sell the heroin to a Vietnamese undercover operative who had been recruited by Cambodian police in Ho Chi Minh City, according to Yen Panharith, K-9 bureau chief at the Interior Ministry’s anti-drug police department.
The two suspects are ethnically Vietnamese, but their citizenship is unclear, Mr. Panharith said.
“We sent our insider, who we got from Prey Nokor City [Ho Chi Minh City], to buy their 1 kg of heroin,” he said, adding that the opiate was worth about $30,000 and had been smuggled from Burma.
“Nguyen Yong Toey confessed that he got this heroin from his partner in Burma to sell,” he added.
Mr. Panharith said the men were questioned by anti-drug police Sunday and would be sent to the Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Monday.
