U.K. police find $568 million of cocaine hidden in bananas, shattering drug-seizure record

British authorities on Friday mentioned that they had discovered greater than 12,500 kilos of cocaine hidden in a cargo of bananas, shattering the document for the largest single seizure of onerous medicine within the nation.

The Nationwide Crime Company said 5.7 tons of cocaine had been present in a container of bananas on the port of Southampton on England’s south coast on Feb. 8. The haul of medication had an estimated road worth of $568 million, the company mentioned.

Earlier than the huge bust, the earlier largest seizures of medication within the U.Okay. was a 3.7-ton haul of cocaine present in Southampton two years in the past, and earlier than that, 3.2 tons found on a tug boat in Scotland in 2015, the company mentioned.

The packages of cocaine discovered this month had been hid in a cargo of bananas which had been transported from South America, and officers imagine the medicine had been headed to Hamburg, Germany, “for onward supply.” 

“This record-breaking seizure will signify an enormous hit to the worldwide organized crime cartels concerned, denying them huge earnings,” NCA Director Chris Farrimond mentioned in a press release. “Whereas the vacation spot for the consignment was continental Europe on this case, I’ve little doubt {that a} important proportion would have ended up again right here within the U.Okay., being peddled by U.Okay. prison gangs.”

The NCA estimates that prison gangs make greater than $5 billion a yr from Britain’s cocaine market, which “has seen an exponential rise in related violence prior to now few years.”

Authorities mentioned they had been working with worldwide companions to determine the prison networks concerned with the record-breaking seizure.

Medication have been found hid in banana shipments all through Europe. Final August, customs brokers within the Netherlands seized 17,600 pounds of cocaine discovered hidden inside crates of bananas in Rotterdam’s port. Three months earlier than that, a police canine sniffed out 3 tons of cocaine stashed in a case of bananas within the Italian port of Gioia Tauro.

Report quantities of cocaine have been seized in Europe in recent times, with ports within the Netherlands, Spain and Belgium accounting for greater than 70% of the seizures, according to statistics analyzed by the European Monitoring Centre for Medication and Drug Habit.

Colombia produces about 60% of the cocaine discovered on this planet.

The announcement of the record-breaking seizure in England got here only a day after the U.S. Customs and Border Safety company mentioned officers had seized 6.5 tons of methamphetamine in a Texas border city, the biggest single seizure ever made at a U.S. port.