Dubai: Dubai Police halted a smuggling operation involving more than 5,500 bottles of alcoholic beverages from Dubai to a neighbouring Gulf country.
Dubai Police arrested three Asian members of the gang involved in collecting, storing, transporting, smuggling and trading of alcoholic beverages in an illegal manner, said Major Mohammad Ahly, director of Criminal Prosecution Department at Dubai Police, told Gulf News recently.
The case is still under investigation as it is believed that there are more people involved in the operation, he said without giving details on the monitoring and surveillance process.
"Our investigative team received information from a reliable source about the illegal operation. We monitored the gang and arrested them when they compiled the entire collection of beverages. We arrested them via borders on their way to a neighbouring Gulf country," he said.
The three suspects are residents in the country and their work involves exporting clothes. They rented a truck and a driver to transport these clothes, which served as a means of hiding the items.
"The driver is not involved, they just used him to carry out their operation. They covered the alcoholic beverages and boxes with the clothes to make it look like a legal operation. When we halted the operation we found the large amounts of beverages along with the used clothes," he said.
The alcoholic beverages they were carrying included expensive brands.
Major Ahly refused to disclose the source of the beverages.
