Dubai Police Thwart $1B Captagon Smuggling Attempt

• UAE police seize $1B captagon shipment hidden in furniture.
• 6 people were arrested, one of the largest captagon busts worldwide.
• Captagon is a highly addictive drug produced in Syria and trafficked to Gulf countries.

The Ministry of Interior in the United Arab Emirates has announced the successful prevention of an attempt to smuggle over 13 tonnes of the highly addictive drug captagon, valued at more than $1 billion.

The Dubai Police have apprehended six individuals associated with what they describe as an “international criminal organization,” marking this as one of the most extensive captagon smuggling operations worldwide.

Innovative tactics were employed to conceal the captagon pills, which were ingeniously hidden within a shipment consisting of 432 premium furniture panels and 651 meticulously crafted doors made from iron and wood.

The process of extracting the tablets from these items was a time-consuming endeavor, lasting several days, as stated by the Ministry of Interior.

A surveillance video, released by the interior ministry on Thursday, depicts the suspects’ attempt to transport the captagon tablets through Dubai’s Jebel Ali Port.

Since 2019, UAE authorities have confiscated hundreds of thousands of captagon pills. In June of the current year, Abu Dhabi Customs reported the seizure of nearly 175,000 pills between the beginning of 2019 and May of this year.

Originally, captagon was the brand name for a medicinal product containing the synthetic stimulant fenethylline. Although it is no longer legally produced, counterfeit drugs bearing the captagon name are frequently intercepted in the Middle East, according to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction.

Experts assert that the majority of global captagon production takes place in Syria, with the Gulf region serving as its primary destination.

The expansion of this industry has prompted concern in the international community.

Last year, the United States introduced the 2022 US Captagon Act, which linked the trade to the Syrian regime and labeled it a “transnational security threat.”