site.btaRegion's Largest Amount of Drugs Ever Seized at Port of Burgas, Worth BGN 70 Mln

More than 430 kilograms of heroin were found Saturday in a trailer that arrived by a ferry at the port of Burgas from Batumi, Georgia, District Prosecutor Georgi Chinev told a briefing on Monday. According to him, this is the largest quantity of narcotics detected in the region since statistics on drug trafficking have been kept. The total amount of heroin found was 436 kilograms, distributed in 434 packages, estimated to be worth around BGN 70 million.

The head of the Department for Combating Drug Trafficking at the Customs Agency, Stefan Bakalov, said that the smuggling attempt was carried out via the so-called "Caucasus route", which is one of the main routes for trafficking to Western Europe.

The head of the Combating Drug Trafficking unit at the Burgas Customs Office, Ivan Sokolov, noted that the trailer arrived by ferry in Burgas at the end of July 2024 and was to be transported by tugboat to the Greek city of Alexandroupolis. The trailer was loaded with specialized machinery for laying cables. After passing them through an X-ray, it was found that they had cavities in which the drugs were hidden. "These are most likely bootleg machines to smuggle contraband," Sokolov said.

A truck with a Kazakh driver was sent to transport the trailer. No one has been detained thus far, the prosecution service said. Actions in the investigation are pending and will focus on international legal exchanges, said prosecutor Andrey Chervenyakov, who is supervising the case.