Cocaine bust in Europe is its biggest ever
BERLIN – German customs officials have found more than 17.6 tons of cocaine in containers that arrived in Hamburg from Paraguay, authorities said Wednesday. Another 7.9 tons of cocaine were seized in Belgium and a suspect was arrested in the Netherlands.
The Hamburg customs office described the find in the German port as the biggest quantity of cocaine ever seized in Europe and one of the biggest single seizures worldwide. The Dutch national prosecutors’ office, referring to the overall haul, said that “never before has so much cocaine been intercepted” in a single operation.
The drugs were found in a search on Feb. 12 of five containers from Paraguay that had been flagged as suspect in a risk analysis by several European customs authorities, the Hamburg office said.
Customs officers found the cocaine hidden in more than 1,700 cans.
The freight document linked to the shipment was addressed to a 28-yearold man in the Dutch town of Vlaardingen, who was arrested Wednesday, prosecutors in the Netherlands said.