Italian authorities announced Monday the seizure of more than six tons of chemical “precursors” from China that are used to produce tens of millions of MDMA pills, like ecstasy, with an estimated retail value of $926 million.
An Italian entrepreneur from Milan (north) is the subject of a preliminary investigation and two Chinese nationals have been arrested in the Netherlands as part of investigations carried out with the assistance of the European judicial agency Eurojust, indicates a press release from the Italian customs police.
Investigators “seized goods from China containing a total of 6,337 tonnes of drug precursors, which would have made it possible to produce more than 63 million MDMA pills”, it is specified.
The seizure was made at Milan’s Malpensa airport in northern Italy during an inspection of goods declared to customs as containing “polyester powder coating” but which in reality contained “white powder grains and yellowish flakes” that were not compliant.
This powder, analyzed in the laboratory, turned out to be PMK, a precursor product of ecstasy normally used in the making of perfumes.
The cargo was to pass through a company with headquarters in Milan and warehouses in Varese, in the same region of Lombardy, before being shipped to the Netherlands.
Dutch police officers, contacted by their Italian colleagues, identified a storage location where dozens of kilos of PMK, ketamine, methylamine and hashish were seized.
