Rio de Janeiro - Lawmen staged raids across Brazil on Thursday to dismantle a large synthetic-drug trafficking organisation with tentacles across the country, federal police said in a statement.
More than 400 officers in half a dozen states were carrying out over 100 arrest and search warrants, the statement said.
The organisation used legal companies including pharmacies to acquire the substances used to make the drugs, which ranged from amphetamines to ecstasy to cocaine.
“The large quantity of chemical substances obtained called the attention of investigators,” according to the statement, which added that the drug peddlers “used luxury cars to sell the illegal goods.”
Eight laboratories were dismantled in the raids, some with “great production capacity,” said the statement.
Officers seized around 630 000 ready-to-consume pills known as “Paraguayan ecstasy” in one lab and 800 000 in another.
The probe suggested that one of gang’s labs generated about $67 million over eight months, the statement said.
AP