Spanish police and customs officers have intercepted the largest known consignment of cocaine ever to reach the country, seizing more than 13 tonnes of the drug, hidden in a cargo of bananas shipped from Ecuador.
Spain’s Policía Nacional said the seizure was the second largest recorded in Europe and one of the largest anywhere in the world.
The force said the container – which had come from Guayaquil, in Ecuador, to the southern Spanish port of Algeciras – was intercepted when it arrived on 14 October because the Ecuadorian export company behind the shipment had been linked to “illicit trafficking”.
After noticing a discrepancy between the container’s stated cargo and its apparent contents, police and customs officers began a thorough search.
“The container in question housed a screen of boxes that actually contained bananas, which were used to hide the drugs,” the Policía Nacional said. “Behind that screen was a large quantity of identical boxes that contained bricks of cocaine that had been packed to fit the boxes exactly.”
After the discovery, a court in Algeciras authorised a search of four properties in Alicante and one in Madrid. The searches yielded a large quantity of documentation, leading to the arrest in Toledo of a partner in the company due to receive the shipment. Two directors remain at large.
The seizure easily exceeds the previous record interception in Spain last year, when police discovered 9.4 tonnes of cocaine, also in the port of Algeciras.
Police said the size of October’s haul made plain the scale of the international distribution operation behind the shipment.
“It’s obvious that these 13 tonnes of cocaine were not only bound for the Spanish market,” António Jesús Martínez, the head of the central narcotics brigade of the Policía Nacional, told reporters on Wednesday. “The Spanish market cannot handle so many drugs all at once. These drugs were intended to be distributed throughout Europe.”
Four years ago, Spanish police broke up an international gang that smuggled cocaine into Europe from Colombia by impregnating it into the cardboard used in boxes of pineapples and limes, and then using chemists to extract it.
A year-long international operation led by officers from Spain’s national police resulted in 18 arrests in Spain, Bulgaria, the Netherlands and Colombia, and the seizure of a tonne of cocaine.