Colombia announces record 12-tonne cocaine seizure
BOGOTA: President Juan Manuel Santos on Wednesday announced Colombia’s police had seized 12 tonnes of cocaine, which he said was the largest single drug seizure in the history of the country.
The drugs were discovered stored underground when around 400 anti-narcotics police stormed four farms in a bananagrowing area in the northwestern department of Antioquia.
“Never before, since we began more than 40 years ago to fight against drug trafficking, have we made a seizure of this magnitude,” Santos told reporters.
Santos said the seizure meant that police hauls of drugs in the year to date, 362 tonnes, had already surpassed the 317 tonnes seized in 2016.
Police estimated the value of the haul at around US$ 360 million.
The cocaine was stored underground on the farms in the municipalities of Chigorodo and Carepa, the said.
They said the drugs belonged to Colombia’s most-wanted man, Dario Antonio Usuga, alias ‘Otoniel’, who is the chief of the country’s largest drug-trafficking gang, the Gulf Clan.
The Gulf Clan, which accounts for some 70 per cent of Colombia’s cocaine production, emerged from the remnants of rightwing paramilitary groups that demobilised in 2006.
In September, Otoniel told the government he intended to give himself up to authorities after an intensive two-year police search.
The US has placed a US$ 5 million bounty on him.
Security forces killed the gang’s second-in- command, Roberto Vargas Gutierrez, alias ‘Galivan,’at the end of August.
Santos has repeatedly warned there would be no let- up in his government’s campaign against the Gulf Clan, following the capture of 28 members of the gang in a huge operation by security forces, code-named ‘Odyssey,’ in Antioquia in September.
Police said at the time that those captured were wanted in connection with 22 murders in local towns Segovia and Remedios since the beginning of 2016.
The South American country is the world’s leading coca leaf grower and also the biggest source of cocaine, producing 866 tons in 2016, according to the UN. — AFP