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Police seize 5,000 ampoules of Testosterone at Russian Border
Posted by Helsingin Sanomat International on 5/22/2002 (Views: 44)
International hormone manufacturing and sales ring operated for nearly a year.
A special squad from the Southern Finland police has uncovered a hormones smuggling ring that extends to Russia, Italy, Sweden and Finland, and is believed to have shipped goods worth around EUR 2 million.
The Porvoo District Court has remanded five Russian citizens for trial. One of them lives in Sweden. The preliminary police enquiries into the case were completed at the beginning of this month, after matters started to fall apart for the criminals in February and March.
At that time, two unsuccessful attempts were made to smuggle items into Finland via the Vaalimaa border point. Hormones for sale or raw materials to be refined into the finished product were hidden in the bodywork of the car, in the tyres and in the petrol tank.
Finnish customs officials have confiscated more than 10 kilos of the raw ingredients for hormone preparations, and around 5,000 ampoules of various testosterone or "Vitamin T" preparations.
The Customs also collected a sizeable haul of 115 litres of pure alcohol, 50,000 cigarettes, medications, a car, and 190,000 Swedish crowns in cash.
Both the police and customs officials have kept the story under wraps for nearly three months for investigative reasons. Interrogation of the suspects has revealed that the operation has been going on for nearly a year and that the raw materials are from Italy.
The goods were ordered from Finland, and have generally been brought in by air freight, with no notification given to either pharmaceutical or customs authorities. From here they were transported across the Russian boarder to laboratories where they were worked up into chemicals for sale, and then they were brought back in retail doses to be distributed among bodybuilders and weightlifters in the Finnish and Swedish market.
The police are remaining very cagey in their disclosures about the five suspects caught, refusing to be drawn on questions of their involvement with the Russian mafia or even their gender. It is believed there is at least one woman among the five, who are all adults between 25 and 50.
The trafficking in hormones and anabolic steroids has been exposed by a special unit set up within the Southern Finland police department, involving detectives and investigators from the police and customs, and a liaison officer from the Frontier Guard. The squad was established in the summer of 2000 and has gradually been reinforced.
The initial brief was to clamp down on the rampant smuggling of alcohol and cigarettes across the border with Russia. This progressed to investigation of the export of stolen cars (often valuable models) to Russia, and an eye has been kept on hormone smuggling routes the whole time.
The use of hormone treatments in competitive sports goes back to the 1950s, but since the 1980s, when the International Olympic Committee added anabolic steroids to its list of banned substances, the use of these preparations has become increasingly the province of amateur bodybuilders and weightlifters. Often the doses they take are several times the recommended medical maximum, and there have been a number of documented cases of physical and mental illness and premature death amongst users.
http://revampscripts.com/cgi-chartcom/nheadlines.pl?board_number=3576&message=132561&returnpage=1
Posted by Helsingin Sanomat International on 5/22/2002 (Views: 44)
International hormone manufacturing and sales ring operated for nearly a year.
A special squad from the Southern Finland police has uncovered a hormones smuggling ring that extends to Russia, Italy, Sweden and Finland, and is believed to have shipped goods worth around EUR 2 million.
The Porvoo District Court has remanded five Russian citizens for trial. One of them lives in Sweden. The preliminary police enquiries into the case were completed at the beginning of this month, after matters started to fall apart for the criminals in February and March.
At that time, two unsuccessful attempts were made to smuggle items into Finland via the Vaalimaa border point. Hormones for sale or raw materials to be refined into the finished product were hidden in the bodywork of the car, in the tyres and in the petrol tank.
Finnish customs officials have confiscated more than 10 kilos of the raw ingredients for hormone preparations, and around 5,000 ampoules of various testosterone or "Vitamin T" preparations.
The Customs also collected a sizeable haul of 115 litres of pure alcohol, 50,000 cigarettes, medications, a car, and 190,000 Swedish crowns in cash.
Both the police and customs officials have kept the story under wraps for nearly three months for investigative reasons. Interrogation of the suspects has revealed that the operation has been going on for nearly a year and that the raw materials are from Italy.
The goods were ordered from Finland, and have generally been brought in by air freight, with no notification given to either pharmaceutical or customs authorities. From here they were transported across the Russian boarder to laboratories where they were worked up into chemicals for sale, and then they were brought back in retail doses to be distributed among bodybuilders and weightlifters in the Finnish and Swedish market.
The police are remaining very cagey in their disclosures about the five suspects caught, refusing to be drawn on questions of their involvement with the Russian mafia or even their gender. It is believed there is at least one woman among the five, who are all adults between 25 and 50.
The trafficking in hormones and anabolic steroids has been exposed by a special unit set up within the Southern Finland police department, involving detectives and investigators from the police and customs, and a liaison officer from the Frontier Guard. The squad was established in the summer of 2000 and has gradually been reinforced.
The initial brief was to clamp down on the rampant smuggling of alcohol and cigarettes across the border with Russia. This progressed to investigation of the export of stolen cars (often valuable models) to Russia, and an eye has been kept on hormone smuggling routes the whole time.
The use of hormone treatments in competitive sports goes back to the 1950s, but since the 1980s, when the International Olympic Committee added anabolic steroids to its list of banned substances, the use of these preparations has become increasingly the province of amateur bodybuilders and weightlifters. Often the doses they take are several times the recommended medical maximum, and there have been a number of documented cases of physical and mental illness and premature death amongst users.
http://revampscripts.com/cgi-chartcom/nheadlines.pl?board_number=3576&message=132561&returnpage=1
