By Ebi Kesiena
In “one of the largest” drug hauls ever made in Italy, police authorities have intercepted over 400 million euros worth of cocaine that was discovered floating off Sicily, (the largest and most populous island in the Mediterranean Sea) in packages likely left by a cargo ship for traffickers to bring ashore.
According to Italian Police on Monday, the packages which were tied together and contained around two tonnes (2,000 kilogrammes) of cocaine, was captured off Sicily’s eastern coast.
The packages, made up of around 1,600 bricks of drugs, and sporting a tracking device, were spotted by a Navy surveillance plane, police said.
The drugs were stored in about 70 waterproof packages, carefully sealed, held together by fishermen’s nets and equipped with a luminous signaling device, the Guardia di Finanza said in a statement.
The “peculiar packaging methods and the presence of a luminous device to allow tracking” suggest the haul was dumped at sea by a cargo ship in order for it to be recovered later, the statement added.
Cocaine seizures increased more than five-fold from 3.6 tonnes in 2018, police noted at the time, describing Italy as a key transit route for the cocaine trade, and where Balkan criminal gangs were consolidating their positions.
“Congratulations to the Guardia di Finanza for this extraordinary operation: (I am) against all drugs and for life, no matter what”, Deputy Prime Minister and Infrastructure Minister Matteo Salvini tweeted on Monday.
