On 9 January, the Port Control Unit of Pakistan Customs in Port Qasim / Karachi, Pakistan, seized 21.7 metric tons of Acetic Anhydrite. This seizure marks one of the biggest detections of this chemical worldwide. Apart from its legitimate industrial use in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry, Acetic Anhydrite is also used both as a drug precursor for heroin production and as a precursor chemical to manufacture Improvised Explosive Devices / IEDs.

Officers of the Port Control Unit of Pakistan Customs applied the risk profiling techniques which have been trained in the framework of the UNODC-WCO "Container Control Programme" and the WCO "Programme Global Shield" which led to the successful detection.

The chemicals arrived in Pakistan in a 20-foot container from Dar es Salaam / Tanzania, declared as "Acetic Acid glacial". Tanzania is not known to be a traditional producer of such products.
Follow-up investigations are ongoing.

The Secretary General of the World Customs Organziation, Kunio Mikuriya, congratulates Pakistan Customs for this outstanding success which sends a clear message on how Customs contributes to protect society.