Pubdate: Thu, 01 Jul 1999 Source: Reuters Copyright: 1999 Reuters Limited. Author: Allan Dowd FOCUS-INTERNATIONAL HEROIN RING SMASHED - CANADA VANCOUVER (Reuters) - Police have broken up a major Asian drug organization that allegedly smuggled in so much heroin it could manipulate prices across North America at will, Canadian authorities said Wednesday. The operation moved millions of dollars of heroin annually from Southeast Asia through Vancouver to markets in the United States as far away as Puerto Rico, according to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. "When you start dealing with heroin at the multi-multikilogram level, you are dealing with the top echelon of heroin movement throughout the world," RCMP Sgt. Patrick Convey said. Twenty-eight people were arrested in raids in Canada, the United States, Hong Kong and Thailand after a nearly three-year-long investigation that began in Canada, authorities said. The drug group had ties with Hong Kong-based crime organizations allegedly involved in other activities in Asia and the Vancouver area, including international credit card fraud, authorities said. They seized 80 heroin units, each weighing 1.5 pounds , during a series of raids in Vancouver, New York and Puerto Rico but believe the organization handled "several hundred units" a year. Most of the heroin, from Burma and China, was smuggled into North America in containers that arrived in the port of Vancouver, they said. It was occasionally stockpiled in Canada to limit North America supplies and drive up prices, they said. "That was the endeavor, to wait for the price to go up and then flood the street with more," Convey said. Mounties said the investigation appeared to support complaints by police in Canada and the United States that Vancouver had become a favorite operational base for international drug smugglers. "It looks like at this point in time Vancouver is the major point of entry of heroin from Southeast Asia," Convey said. He said smugglers liked to work from Canada because its drug laws carried lesser penalties than those in the United States. Authorities said most of the money raised by the group was smuggled back to Asia, and they will investigate if any banks in Hong Kong or other major Asian financial centers were involved in laundering the money. Canadian officials said they were forced to move against the organization at this time because the FBI had recently arrested members of the drug group in New York and Canada was worried the smugglers would be tipped off to the larger probe. - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D