Thai police arrested Kuo Te-tsai, 42, in the southern beach town of Phuket on Sunday, said Lt. Gen. Priewphan Damaphong, Thailand's deputy national police chief. Police also arrested a Thai accomplice, Phongthat Pongsathirsakul, he said.
Police moved in to make the arrests after receiving information that the heroin would be shipped out of Thailand to Western countries in the coming days, he said.
Police found 229 pounds of heroin pressed into 261 bars and stuffed into cylinders hidden beneath the cement floors of a house Kuo was renting, Priewphan told a news conference. The confiscated heroin has a local value of more than US$2.9 million, a Thai police statement said, adding that its street value abroad would be about 10 times that amount, or US$29 million. "This heroin had come from the Golden Triangle and was going to be shipped to Taiwan before going to markets in Western countries," Priewphan said. The Golden Triangle is a heroin-producing area where the borders of Burma, Laos and Thailand converge. The US Drug Enforcement Administration had been tracking Kuo and alerted Thai authorities in August that he had entered the country, Priewphan said. DEA official Andre W. Kellum said he could not elaborate on the heroin's destination since the investigation was ongoing. The case is "very significant because a kilo of heroin on the streets of America goes for a great deal of money," he told the news conference.
Drug trafficking in Thailand is punishable by death.
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