Police in Italy announced on Friday that they had intercepted a record 5.3-tonne cocaine haul being moved between ships off the southern coast of Sicily.
In a statement, the Guardia di Finanza said, “The consignment had an estimated value of 850 million euros ($946 million) and five people have been arrested”.
A surveillance aircraft witnessed parcels being thrown from the ship’s deck into the seas of the Strait of Sicily to be recovered by a waiting fishing trawler.
They stopped the trawler and discovered substantial quantities of cocaine hidden behind some paneling on the deck. Two Tunisians were detained, as well as an Italian, an Albanian, and a French national.
Renato Schifani, the regional president of Sicily, praised the operation as a blow against drug smuggling.
“Drugs are a scourge of our society fuelled by unscrupulous men who sow death by crushing hopes and destroying many families”, he stated in a statement.
In April, Italian authorities discovered about 2 tonnes of cocaine floating at sea off eastern Sicily, which they think was left by a cargo ship for collection.
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