DURBAN: South African Customs seized ecstasy tablets worth R85 million and arrested Florida Road nightclub owner and his business partner.
Durban club owner Gregory Lyris, 45, and Bulgarian national Valari Nikolov, 41 were arrested previous week, customs raided a Westville home and arrested the homeowner and two other men for possession of chemicals used to manufacture drugs.
The homeowner is a business partner of Lyris.
Lyris and Nikolov were arrested at the Middelburg Toll Plaza in Mpumalanga by members of the National Crime Intelligence Unit, the National Investigation Unit, and the Hawks
National police spokesman, Lieutenant-General Solomon Makgale said the pair had been travelling on the N4 to Durban at the time.
“The team recovered precursor chemicals which are commonly used in the manufacturing of drugs, particularly cocaine.
“They also recovered a bulk of powdered chemicals which are suspected to have been used in manufacturing illicit narcotics. They arrested the owner of the house and two of his employees,” said Makgale.
Makgale said the three would appear in court on Friday if the results from the analysis came back positive.
He was unable to immediately confirm which court they would appear in.
Makgale said the two cases were linked, as the man arrested in Westville and the nightclub owner arrested in Middelburg were business parters who owned clubs “on the famous Florida Road in Durban and in other parts of the Musgrave area in Durban”.
Police believe the arrests signal a major breakthrough in the drug-trafficking world in South Africa, which is believed to be worth billions of rands.
The busts follow high profile drug-related arrests in the past few months. Early last month, in one of Durban’s largest busts of cocaine, customs confiscated 95 kg of a pure form of the drug worth almost R30m, at the Durban Harbour.
