A squad from the General Service Unit (GSU) from Nairobi was on Saturday deployed at the Eldoret International Airport so as to help the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) detectives to access stores where a consignment containing an addictive drug, Mandrax was kept.
This is after the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) officials at the airport tried to block the DCI detectives from accessing the stores.
Three of the KRA officials and one official of the Pharmacy and Poisons board were later arrested after they were suspected of trying to sneak the illegal drugs in the country.
During the operation, 80,000 capsules of Mandrax valued at Sh35 million was seized from the Eldoret International Airport stores.
According to the Rift Valley Regional Coordinator Mongo Chiwanga, the consignment was allegedly diverted to Eldoret from the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.
Chiwanga told journalists that the consignment was impounded on April 16 and samples were taken to government chemist the following day for confirmation.
“The cargo was taken into a strong room to wait for those results which came back on April 26 showing they were positive for mandrax,” he said.
“It is upon this time that the officers who had been investigating took action in terms of taking the consignment for further processing but it is around that time that some officers proved unwilling and this is what led to the arrests,” added the Regional Coordinator.
Investigations have now been launched to establish whether importers were only testing whether they could get access to the Eldoret Airport or whether there is a market for the hard drugs in the region.
Chiwanga further issued a stern warning to any local operators who may be involved in the illegal trade saying their days are numbered.
“We appreciate that the airport has a very effective multi-agency team that works as a team apart from maybe a few agencies. We have been informed specifically about KRA and KeBS and we would wish to put them on notice that government work has to be done through various agencies and we want them to operate within that multi-agency approach,” he said.
The 80,000 capsules of mandrax nabbed had been put in 10 cartons with each of them having 16 smaller sachets that had a further 50 small packets with each packet containing 10 capsules.