Heroin is also flown in to Potchentong airport near Phnom Penh, where customs checks are almost non-existent. The same source said high-ranking officers participate in these activities. The head of the drug squad, Heng Pao, confirmed that he had arrested ten officers involved in trafficking. In August 1995, ten people, including two police officers, were caught with 71 kilograms of heroin. According to different Western sources, Cambodian police officers and officials are involved in drug trafficking alongside Laotian soldiers who make it easy to cross the frontier, particularly by boat on the Mekong.
Cambodian investigators say there are two types of traffickers.
First there are the members of Chinese-Khmer mafias and Cambodian nationals. They are very well organized, with many contacts, and their rings are hard to break. The law of silence prevails, mainly because of death threats against potential informers and pressure on their families. Chinese organized crime from Hong Kong, China, Taiwan and Singapore show great interest in Cambodia. The second category are small-time drug runners, especially Nigerians, Senegalese and Cameroonians, who ferry drugs to Nigeria and then on to Europe, and Tamils, whose network is very hard to penetrate, who deal in arms and heroin to finance the Tamil Tigers' guerrilla war in the north of Sri Lanka.