600 Homes Raided in International Date-Rape Probe

Tag : Chemical Industrial

BERLIN — Police searching for chemicals used to make thedate-rape drug GHB raided some 600 homes and offices in Austria,Switzerland and Germany on Wednesday, German investigators said.
The raids followed months of investigation launched after policebecame suspicious of online orders for GBL, a chemical found inindustrial cleaners, Bavarian state investigators said.
The legal chemical can be used to manufacture GHB, a potentdepressant sometimes called the date-rape drug.
The GBL orders were placed to a chemical company near Munich andanother in northern Germany, investigators said.
Swiss police on Wednesday searched a number of houses in 17cantons, or states, the country's Federal Police Office said. Someof the searched premises allegedly housed laboratories for theproduction of synthetic drugs, the office said.
In Austria, Interior Ministry spokesman Rudolf Gollia said threehouses were searched in the states of Carinthia, Lower Austria andStyria, where a possible drug lab was found.