Greek police stated Sunday they seized almost 600 kilos of cocaine with an estimated worth of over $6.5 million. The cocaine was hidden inside a container of bananas imported from Ecuador, they stated, marking yet one more occasion of medicine being discovered hid within the fruit.
Police had been knowledgeable by the UK’s Nationwide Crime Company that the cocaine could be carried by a ship headed to the northern Greek port of Thessaloniki.
Three males have been arrested, officers stated.
Law enforcement officials discovered the cocaine and eliminated a lot of the medicine contained in brick-sized packages from the container earlier than it was loaded right into a truck.
Police launched a brief video of the removing operation, exhibiting bricks falling from a container that was opened by officers. Authorities additionally launched photos of the purported medicine, exhibiting dozens of bricks labeled with the phrase “Diesel.”
Greek police stated Sunday they seized almost 600 kilos of cocaine with an estimated worth of over $6.5 million.
Greek Police
The truck headed for the Athens suburb of Aspropyrgos, greater than 300 miles to the south, the place the police arrested three males as they opened the container Saturday.
The entire quantity of cocaine seized was 598 kilos, police stated.
The arrested males embody two Greeks, the 40-year-old proprietor of a haulage firm, a 32-year-old and a 47-year-old Bulgarian citizen, police say, including that the Bulgarian was in contact with a drug gang and arranged the choosing up and transport of the container. The 32-year-old was accountable for distributing the drug via unnamed gang members.
Police are in search of extra individuals they are saying belong to a drug distribution gang. The three arrested males will face a prosecutor Monday.
Bananas often used to cover cocaine
Cocaine has been discovered hidden in banana shipments throughout the globe in current months.
In July, Russia stated it seized 1,800 kilos of cocaine hidden underneath a cargo of bananas, calling it its largest bust of medicine from Latin America this yr.
In Could, staff at a Norwegian fruit distributor found a packet of cocaine in a field of bananas, alerting customs officers who discovered a stash of 147 kilos.
Final December, authorities within the Dominican Republic confiscated almost 9.5 tons of cocaine from a banana cargo on the nation’s most vital seaport.
In August 2024, customs brokers seized greater than 200 kilos of cocaine on the port in Greece from a ship carrying the fruit. The month earlier than that, police canines in Ecuador helped discover greater than six tons of cocaine hidden in a banana cargo headed to Germany.
In March final yr, Bulgarian customs officers confiscated about 170 kilograms of cocaine from a ship transporting bananas from Ecuador.
The month earlier than that, British authorities stated they discovered greater than 12,500 kilos of cocaine hidden in a cargo of the fruit, breaking the file for the largest single seizure of onerous medicine within the nation.
Extra from CBS Information
