Two Uzbek nationals carrying heroin were stopped at a railway station in Ufa. There were plastic packages of heroin weighing over 8 kilograms (17 pounds) in the false bottoms of bags and shoe soles.
"Key drug traffickers were arrested during further search operations," the source said. "There were Gypsies and people from the CIS among the traffickers."
Another 3 kilograms (6.6 pounds) of heroin was discovered in shoes and bags with false bottoms in the town of Tuimazy. A search through a house of local Gypsy women suspected of drug trafficking revealed criminal money and numerous forms for money transfer to CIS countries.
Police General-Major Valery Kokin, chief of the Russian Federal Drug Control Service's department in Bashkortostan, said if the heroin had been marketed on the black market, drug traffickers would have earned over 11 billion rubles ($427 million).
