Kazakhstan dismantles international drug network recruitment channel

Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs has dismantled an international recruitment channel used to draw people into a transnational drug trafficking network, the ministry said.

The large-scale special operation lasted more than a year and involved law enforcement agencies from several countries, Caliber.Az reports, citing Kazakh media.

According to the ministry, the operation was conducted in cooperation with law enforcement authorities in Ukraine and Albania, the Prosecutor General’s Offices of Kazakhstan and Ukraine, Interpol, and the US Drug Enforcement Administration.

The criminal network recruited people under the guise of legitimate employment, offering positions as call-centre operators, HR managers, chemists, couriers, logistics specialists, and warehouse workers.

Those recruited were promised easy and lucrative employment but were ultimately drawn into an international drug trafficking operation, according to investigators.

Kuandyk Alzhanov, Deputy Chairman of the Committee on Combating Drug Crime of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, described the network as a “complex criminal structure with a clear distribution of roles.”

By Vafa Guliyeva