A couple of years ago, an interesting and unusual case happened on the Danish-Swedish border. Late at night at the beginning of 2017, the Swedish-registered Saab 9-3 Sporcombi rolled off the Danish ferry in the port of Helsingborg. The 26-year-old man gave a very nervous impression and when the car was taken out for inspection at Customs, more than 30 kilos of drugs were found hidden in a special compartment in the Saab’s roof.
A few minutes after one o’clock on the night of January 24, the man entered the customs filter with his white Saab 9-3 station wagon. He gave a noticeably nervous impression and had great difficulty answering the customs inspector’s questions and preferred not to meet the gaze.
Customs suspected and took the car to the authority’s garage for further inspection. There, the customs noticed that something was wrong with the roof. One of the inspectors saw a package of brown tape and stuck in an inspection needle and got out a small amount of white powder?!
A quick check later showed that it was heroin and customs decided to examine the car more closely. The roof was lifted off and exposed a larger hidden compartment with a large amount of drugs, packaged in several smaller packages. A total of 45 packages, 21.8 kilos of cocaine and 10.1 kilos of heroin were found. The value of the drug seizure amounts to at least SEK 11 million at the streetlevel, but since the cocaine content was so high that it could have been diluted several times, the market value is estimated at more than SEK 30 million.
The Hidden compartment was ingeniously constructed as a box between the car’s inner and outer roofs. According to customs, the secret compartment was about one meter long, 90 centimeters wide and about 10 centimeters deep. The 26-year-old was arrested for aggravated drug trafficking. He admits to the smuggling, but says he did not know to what extent. Apparently, he was just a courier, and he didn’t know the exact amount of the shipment.
Certainly, drug smugglers did not accidentally choose this car – Saab 9-3 Sportcombi. The station wagon version of the 9-3 model has a large long roof and has enough height to set up a secret compartment, and on the other hand, this car is quite common in Scandinavia and does not attract attention.
Even drug smugglers love saab