Police on Friday busted a large drug ring near Seoul with apparent ties to the Taliban, arresting eight people on charges of smuggling tons of a chemical agent used in making heroin to Afghanistan.
The suspects -- one Afghan, one Indian, two Pakistanis and four Koreans -- attempted to use South Korea, a relatively drug-free nation where monitoring is loose, as a shipping point for massive quantities of acetic anhydride destined for southern Afghanistan, the National Police Agency said in a press conference.
"The foreign suspects have admitted that the agent's final recipient was the Taliban, but they are denying that they are members of the Taliban. We are going to further investigate," said Kim Ki-yong, a foreign affairs investigation officer.
Another Pakistani man, who became a naturalized Korean in 2005 and fled to United Arab Emirates after the probe started, is now detained in Dubai, police said.
Police confiscated 12 tons of acetic anhydride from the Afghan-Indian pair but suspect much more has already ended up in the hands of the Taliban through the Pakistani dealers. The investigation started in March after some of the shipments were discovered in a Pakistani port en route to Afghanistan.
Kim said the bust was the largest ever concerning acetic anhydride.
Police arrested the Afghan and Indian men in a chemical engineering factory in Ansan, an industrial suburb of Seoul, where the chemical agent was stashed for shipment disguised as motor oil.
The Pakistanis operated in another factory in a Seoul suburb, shipping about 50 tons of the substance packed as hydrogen peroxide solution, a disinfectant, to Afghanistan from April 2007 to March this year, police said.
The alleged smugglers were paid through Hawala, a huge money broker network based mainly in the Middle East, police said. The cost of the entire 62 tons of acetic anhydride was not huge -- about 360 million won (US$344,800) -- but could be used to produce nearly 30 tons of heroin that would generate massive profits, Kim said.
"The suspects had money transferred from accounts suspected to be linked to Hawala, and they acknowledged they had received orders from the Taliban," Kim said.
The investigation started in March after the International Criminal Police Organization discovered 14 tons of the agent, whose shipping origin was Korea, in Karachi, a bustling port in southern Pakistan, and notified the Korean police. The confiscated material was part of the 50 tons of the Pakistani shipments, and police suspect that the rest, 36 tons, has already reached the Taliban.