ISTANBUL: Hundreds of luxury watches and precious jewelry valued at$1 million dollars have been seized by police in an anti-smuggling operation.
Police confiscated 527 luxury-brand watches, 30 strings of gold prayer beads and 78-carat and 83-carat diamond pieces when they searched the previously-identified addresses, reports said.
The police were acting on a tip-off which said a criminal network, thought to have sold stolen luxury watches, collected from the black market, to jewelry stores in Munich, Germany, and smuggled new luxury watches they bought in Switzerland into Turkey.
During the investigation, police learned that three members of crime network travelled abroad on June 17. Police found 16 luxury watches without customs declarations when they searched the suspects on their arrival in Istanbul on June 19.
The smuggled watches are valued at$1.5 million, according to police sources. As part of the investigation, police later detained 11 more people with close ties to the crime network when they raided nine watch shops in the districts of Bakırköy and Fatih.
