The Judiciary Police (PJ) picked up 30 suspects for drug-related crimes on Thursday while Zhuhai police arrested seven suspected kingpins, which supplied the local suspects with drugs.
A PJ spokesperson said at a press conference on Friday that the 30 people caught in Macau included locals, Hongkongers and mainlanders aged between 19 and 60. Their professions range from chefs and designers to businesspeople and lawyers.
According to local Chinese-language media reports over the weekend, all the lawyers netted in the case are from the mainland.
The suspects caught in Macau comprise suspected drug dealers and abusers.
The spokesperson said that police received a tip-off in May last year about the gang’s operation, in which members supplied drugs such as Ice and ketamine to local club goers. Investigators took up the case and found that the kingpins were mainlanders thus they contacted the Guangdong authorities.
After months of co-operation between local and Zhuhai police, PJ officers gathered enough evidence and went to a club in Taipa where they arrested nine suspects. They also went to other local addresses where they picked up 21 more suspects. Investigators seized a quantity of drugs including cannabis, cocaine, Ice, ketamine and magu with a street value of about two million patacas.
The spokesperson said the criminal organisation had been in operation for less than a year, where some of the suspects smuggled the drugs to Macau and handed them over to six local suspects, who in turn sold the drugs to patrons and employees of local clubs and discos.
The spokesperson said that the suspects had been transferred to the Public Prosecution Office (MP) to face possible arraignments on drug-related charges, adding that a number of suspects were still at large.
