YEREVAN, OCTOBER 31, ARMENPRESS. State Revenue Committee’s anti-contraband department agents have thwarted 126 customs smuggling attempts from January to October of 2018, with criminal investigations being launched in 70 cases.

Head of the department Vardan Vardanyan held a news conference and presented the results of the work for the abovementioned period.

He said that they discovered weapons and drugs smuggling cases. “The most noteworthy being a group selling narcotics through social media, as a result of which nearly 600 grams hashish and 20 grams MDMA [commonly known as ecstasy] were discovered,” he said.

Vardanyan said that as a result of different preventive operations an unprecedented amount of batches of drug smuggling was thwarted.

“Smugglers attempted to import more than 4kg cocaine, 2kg opium, 3gr methadone, 6gr hashish, 290 pieces of electronic cigarettes filled with hashish oil and candy filled with narcotics. Drug exporting attempts were also prevented – 8kg opium and more than 13kg meth,” he said.

He said that the anti-contraband department has cooperation with the national security service and police in 2018, which led to discovering not only individual smugglers, but criminal syndicates.

Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan