Seized from the back of a lorry ... £100m of cocaine bound for UK
MORE than £100million of cocaine on a lorry bound for London has been intercepted in the US following a tipoff from British agents.
Almost 1.5 tons of the Class A drug was found at a port in Newark, NewJersey, after the UK’s National Crime Agency passed information to American officials.
Sixty packages containing cocaine were intercepted during the multiagency operation. The container also held a legitimate shipment of dried fruit. No arrests were made.
The weight of the drugs is equivalent to more than a third of all the cocaine seized in Britain last year. The container was due to be shipped to Rotterdam in the Netherlands and then on to an address in London. The drugs had arrived in the US from Buenaventura in Colombia.
The UK street value of the cocaine was estimated to be in excess of £100million. The bust, which took place on February 28, was the biggest seizure of the drug at the Port of New York and New Jersey for 25 years.
Dave Hucker, regional head of international operations for the NCA, said: ‘Taking this amount of cocaine out of circulation will be a massive hit for the organised crime group involved. While this seizure was made on the other side of the Atlantic, there is no doubt in my mind that a proportion of these drugs would have ended up on the streets of the UK.
‘We know there are direct links between drug distribution and street violence, intimidation and exploitation in UK towns and cities. These kind of seizures demonstrate the role the NCA plays in preventing that.’
The largest ever seizure of cocaine in the UK was made from a luxury yacht in Southampton in 2011.
Officials recovered 1.2 tons of the drug at about 90 per cent purity, with an estimated street value of £300million. It was so well hidden on the yacht that it took six days to find it all.