Spain makes $249m cocaine bust

Published December 6, 2017

MADRID: Spanish authorities have netted nearly six tonnes of high-grade cocaine worth 210 million euros ($249m), in one of the biggest seizures of the drug ever made in Europe, the interior ministry said on Tuesday.

Police and customs officials found 5.88 tonnes of cocaine on Nov 28 in a container supposedly transporting bananas which arrived in the southern port of Algeciras from Medellin in Colombia, it said.

Police arrested a Spaniard who headed the import department of the company using the container, and two alleged accomplices, a Honduran and a Portuguese national. Two other people are under investigation.

The seizure is “one of Europe’s biggest” and the second largest of cocaine ever carried out by Spanish authorities, the statement said. The country’s biggest was a haul of 7.6 tonnes, made on the high seas in 1999.

Published in Dawn, December 6th, 2017

Opinion

Editorial

Ties with Tehran
Updated 24 Apr, 2024

Ties with Tehran

Tomorrow, if ties between Washington and Beijing nosedive, and the US asks Pakistan to reconsider CPEC, will we comply?
Working together
24 Apr, 2024

Working together

PAKISTAN’S democracy seems adrift, and no one understands this better than our politicians. The system has gone...
Farmers’ anxiety
24 Apr, 2024

Farmers’ anxiety

WHEAT prices in Punjab have plummeted far below the minimum support price owing to a bumper harvest, reckless...
By-election trends
Updated 23 Apr, 2024

By-election trends

Unless the culture of violence and rigging is rooted out, the credibility of the electoral process in Pakistan will continue to remain under a cloud.
Privatising PIA
23 Apr, 2024

Privatising PIA

FINANCE Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb’s reaffirmation that the process of disinvestment of the loss-making national...
Suffering in captivity
23 Apr, 2024

Suffering in captivity

YET another animal — a lioness — is critically ill at the Karachi Zoo. The feline, emaciated and barely able to...