Crash during heroin delivery reveals possible fraud

ISTANBUL – Hürriyet

DHA photo

A car crash in Turkey’s southeast has revealed a substantial difference between the amount of heroin confiscated in a recent police operation and the amount shown to be collected in official records, daily Hürriyet has reported.

A 20-kilogram difference was discovered in the amount of heroin being transported by officials to Van’s criminal lab and the official drug amount recorded when a car carrying a judge and a prosecutor crashed Jan. 9.

Over 75 kilos of heroin were being delivered to the gendarmerie crime lab for further processing when the vehicle transporting it was involved in a crash in Malatya. A judge and prosecutor from Başkale, a district in Van, were in the vehicle with the chief clerk and a sergeant who were officially assigned to make the delivery.

Following the accident, the car was brought in for mechanical service, although mechanics were warned not to look in the vehicle’s trunk for security reasons. The mechanics immediately alerted authorities to the suspicious nature of the incident.

Inspections revealed a gap in the numbers, with over 20 kilos of heroin shown unaccounted for in official records. It was also revealed that the prosecutor and the judge were not assigned to oversee the delivery and should therefore not have been in the car.

Van’s provincial gendarmerie claimed both men were told to follow the transportation as a patrol force.
The cities en-route to Van were also not notified of the transfer until the vehicle was confiscated by police forces on Jan. 9, after the crash in Malatya.