According to the ministry, they were informed in August by authorities in Taiwan (China) about two Chinese drug trafficking suspects entering Vietnam.
Local police then closely monitored six Chinese suspects who arrived in Vietnam in September. They hired some hotel rooms, interpreters, cars and trucks, and a storage in the northern port city of Haiphong. The Chinese group then bought 100 tonnes of cement and kept it in the storage in Hong Bang District and returned to China.
Police then discovered that the group had taken cement out of many bags and put drugs inside.
On September 20, two men who were leaders of the ring, arrived in Vietnam and came to the storage facility in Haiphong to upload the bags onto a cargo ship which they intended to transport to China.
Police co-operating with concerned agencies arrived to check the storage and found 30 bags containing 750 kilos of ketamine.
Liao Zhi Huai, 43, was arrested following the raid.
Police then checked Huai's second storage in neighbouring Thai Binh Province and detained five Vietnamese accomplices.
On September 24, police arrested a Vietnamese driver, Pham Duy Khanh, 35, after he was found to have transported the drugs for the group. Checking Khanh's truck, police found 22 bags containing 550 kilos of ketamine hidden in disguised petrol tanks.
At the police station, the group said that they had intended to transport all the drugs to China by sea.
Huai told the police that he established a company to produce the drugs himself in another country before shipping to Vietnam and transporting to China. Huai had imported nearly 9,000 tonnes of 64 different kinds of chemicals worth USD5.70 million over the past year for ketamine production.
