Thai police found heroin and ketamine hidden inside four 15ft-tall Moai replicas that were set to be ‘exhibited' in Taiwan.

Authorities raided the warehouse in Chonburi province after investigating a Taiwanese national who was believed to have been smuggling drugs into the Southeast Asian country.

They tracked down his Thai girlfriend who reportedly rented the entire warehouse to keep the ‘artworks' and obtained a search warrant.

When they finally checked the giant rock dolls, they noticed it had been hollow and found the drugs inside. Footage shows cops pulling out plastic bags with the suspected contraband inside on June 8.

National Police Deputy Police General Roy Ingkapairote said: ‘We were working with the Immigration Bureau to track down this international drug syndicate. Our investigation led us to believe that the warehouse was connected to our person of interest.'

The wanted Taiwanese man, identified as ‘Pun' by the police, had a Burmese girlfriend Zhu Nam Phim who was reportedly jobless but could afford to rent an entire compound to keep the rocks. She also reportedly had at least 10 million baht (234,243 GBP) on her personal bank account.

She was working with another Thai woman Kanyapak Sanguansathan who acted as her assistant, paying for the expenses and organising the schedule of the statue. Both women would be questioned by the police while Taiwanese Pun was still at large.

It was believed that the Moai replicas have been taken to different countries ‘for art exhibition' but the details were yet to be confirmed by authorities.

Moai are giant rock sculptures made by the Rapa Nui people in the Easter Island in eastern Polynesia between the 1200s and 1500s.

Thailand has become a notorious hub for drug production and trafficking. In the north of the country, the ‘Golden Triangle' area shares borders with Laos and Myanmar, and has produced large amounts of opium since the 1950s but focus in recent years has shifted to the more profitable methamphetamine. Officials believe most of the meth is produced in the Shan State of Myanmar before being distributed through neighbouring countries where prices are higher.

In November 2020, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) began working with Thai officials ‘to disrupt the trafficking of precursor chemicals used for the illicit manufacture of synthetic drugs in the Golden Triangle'.

Police believe the products are shipped through Thailand and Cambodia before being delivered to wealthy Asian nations including Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Australia. The profits are often laundered by gangs from China through casinos in Cambodia.