Estonian police have charged a British and an Estonisn citizen with drug smuggling, for trying to traffick a record haul of 20 kilogram’s (44 pounds) of opium from Estonia to Scotland, officials said Saturday.
Estonian authorities arrested the two men last week as they attempted to leave the Estonian capital Tallinn by ferry for Finland.
They were charged on Friday.
Police found the opium in 20 tin cans hidden in a secret compartment built into the fuel tank of the Briton's car.
The two men will remain in custody during preliminary investigation until the end of December, security police spokesman Hannes Kont said.
"Expertise has established the substance is opium, which is used for making heroin," Kont told AFP.
"Estonia was used in this operation as a transit country, and as far as we know, the destination was Scotland," he said.
The street value of the haul in Estonia could be around 20 million kroons (1.3 million euros, 1.1 million dollars), but it would be significantly higher if sold in Scotland, Kont said.
The operation was carried out by the Estonian security police, the Scottish drug enforcement agency and British customs, after several months of surveillance.
It is the biggest haul of a hard drugs seized on the Estonian border, police said -- TALLINN (AFP)
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