Romanian police announced on Tuesday the destruction of a group that specialized in removing high-risk drug precursors from civilian circulation and sending them to the territory of several European Union countries for the illegal production of methamphetamine, an investigation launched almost a year ago.

In this case, DIICOT prosecutors decided to detain two Romanian citizens for 24 hours, who are suspected of creating an organized criminal group, continuously placing classified substances on the market, and involvement in the domestic drug trade. . On their behalf, the Bucharest Court issued warrants for preventive arrest.

How the group worked

According to the investigation, in the period from January 2021 to February 2023, two persons together with foreign citizens – Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Lithuanians – created an organized criminal group that operated on the territory of several EU states, in particular Poland. , the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Lithuania and Romania.

Prosecutors say members of the group created a scheme to divert, “launder” and manufacture two precursors, ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, in pill form.

At the same time, the members of the group transported pills from Romania to Poland to the companies that purchased them, without having permission to introduce drugs into circulation. Thus, illegal actions were hidden under the guise of carrying out commercial operations with the appearance of legality.

In the Czech Republic and Poland, one of the biggest problems is the production of methamphetamine in illegal laboratories, and the precursors provided by the members of the group were one of the most important substances in the production of the drug.

The tablets could be picked up in Poland by a member of the group, a Polish citizen, who would divide the batches into smaller batches and arrange for their delivery to the Czech Republic and Slovakia for distribution to individuals who would use the tablets in the production of methamphetamine.

The group allegedly arranged for the transportation and delivery of nearly 169 million pills for the production of methamphetamine

During the specified period, the members of the group organized the transportation and delivery to the purchasing companies of 168,788,870 tablets, which included the precursors ephedrine and pseudoephedrine (approximately 6.7 tons of ephedrine hydrochloride), through production, from which they could produce approximately 4.7 tons of methamphetamine.

Pills manufactured in Romania were used by foreign nationals, members of an extended criminal group, to manufacture drugs in underground laboratories discovered in the Czech Republic and Poland.

Investigators say that the wholesale price of one kilogram of methamphetamine is about 40,000 euros, and the retail price of one gram of methamphetamine is between 70 and 100 euros.

The Romanian production company, whose administrator and shareholder is one of the suspects, made 97 deliveries to companies in the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Lithuania and Spain during the period of activity of the criminal group.

Thus, between January 2021 and February 2023, the two suspects organized the production, storage, delivery, transportation and distribution of tablets containing secret substances (addictive precursors) for 7 pharmaceutical companies in the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Lithuania and Spain , for which the companies, with the exception of two of them, did not have a license and sales permits registered with the competent national authorities provided for by the relevant national and European regulations.

Following searches in Romania on March 1, approximately 3 tons of Category I precursors, 4,944,000 ephedrine and pseudoephedrine pills, 200 kilograms of precursor raw material prepared for the preparation of pills, approximately €600,000 and several documents were found. interests in the case.

According to the Romanian police, following an investigation conducted in Poland, preventive measures have been applied to 8 people involved in the theft of batches of drugs containing ephedrine/pseudoephedrine, which came from a factory in Romania. On February 26, 2023, a van with Polish license plates (which allegedly left loaded with pallets of medicines from the city of Voluntari, from the medicines factory) was found on the territory of Poland, and the suspects (including the head of this group) during the unloading of medicines, in another place, than registered in the CMR.

About 100 vials of ephedrine and various pills that came from a factory in Romania were found in the group’s warehouse.

In Slovakia, preventive measures were taken against 4 people and 1 million euros were seized during searches, and in the Czech Republic, preventive measures were taken against two people and documents related to the sale of the company were seized.