Police of Vinh Town in Nghe An Province stopped a motorbike and arrested Lao national Mua Ba Cho, 35, and Mua Ba Va, 31, a Nghe An resident, at 2 p.m. on Saturday as they were transporting 15 kilograms of synthetic drugs from Laos to Vinh.

At the same time, another group of police arrested Hoang Nghia Van, 44, also from Nghe An, while he was waiting for the duo in the neighboring Ha Tinh province. Thet seized his car and $16,000 in cash.

The raids followed a period of surveillance based on suspicions aroused in early May that the three arrested men were engaged in a cross-border drug trafficking ring, with Van providing the money for Cho and Va to transport narcotic drugs from Laos to Vinh, before they transporting the drugs to customers in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam's largest city which is a day travel to the south.

Vietnam has become a key trafficking hub for narcotics from the Golden Triangle, an intersection of Laos, Thailand and Myanmar, the world's second largest drug producing area after the Golden Crescent in South Asia.

On May 23, Vietnamese border guards and Lao police caught three Lao nationals planning to smuggle 100,000 ecstasy pills from Laos to Vietnam.

Drug trafficking and consumption have persisted and worsened in Vietnam over the last few years though it has some of the world’s toughest laws, including death sentence for smuggling.