Drugs found in pagoda’s flower bed + 2 women sentenced decades for trafficking

Drugs found in pagodas flower bed

Wed, 30 April 2014

Kim Sarom

A monk was sent to court yesterday after allegedly being caught with 140 grams of methamphetamine in Takeo province, police said.

Chea Pav, 19, is accused of storing a plastic bag containing the drugs under flowers at a pagoda in Takeo town for two other people, Sem Socheat, a police department chief in the province, said.

The police prepared the case . . . and the court will take care of it from here, he said, adding that Pav was arrested on April 25.

The two other suspects, Socheat said, remained at large and had twice contacted the monk requesting to borrow money before arranging to meet him outside the pagoda.

On one of these occasions, the pair a man and a woman asked the monk to store the bag on the pagoda grounds.

A prison official who knew the monk became suspicious and confronted him, Socheat added. When the drugs were found, he called the police.

Pav denied speaking with the two men on the phone, Socheat said, but police found 20 text messages between the monk and the suspects.

http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/drugs-found-pagodas-flower-bed

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2 women sentenced decades for trafficking

Wed, 30 April 2014

Buth Reaksmey Kongkea

Two women, one Thai and one Cambodian, were convicted yesterday of attempting to smuggle nearly five kilograms of methamphetamine into the Kingdom last summer.

Wilawan Chinpang, a 29-year-old Thai national, was sentenced to 30 years in prison and fined $20,000, while Keo Dary, 44, was sentenced to 20 years with a $12,500 fine, according to Kor Vandy, a Phnom Penh Municipal Court judge.

Both women were convicted of keeping, transporting and trafficking drugs.

Colonel Yeng Bunna, chief of the anti-drug police, said the two suspects worked for a group of international drug traffickers hiding in Thailand and Cambodia.

Wilawan Chinpang brought the drugs from India to Cambodia . . . She planned to give it to a Nigerian man who was the drug ringleader hiding in Phnom Penh, he said.

When Chinpang tried to pass her luggage through Phnom Penh International Airport on July 29, police confiscated 4.9 kilograms of methamphetamine from her bag, while Dary was arrested at a hotel.