Rotterdam police seize two tons of cocaine hidden among bananas
Dutch police in the port of Rotterdam have seized 2,020 kilos of cocaine, with an estimated value of over €151m (US$170m), the authorities said on Sunday, according to Reuters.
The drugs were found in a shipment of bananas from Ecuador destined for a Hungarian company, the Rotterdam prosecutor’s office said in a media release.
It’s the second cocaine batch in a banana shipment found in Rotterdam in a week, as a smaller - 374 kilos - was discovered on May 31, also having arrived from Guayaquil, Ecuador, according to another article.
Rotterdam is the largest port in Europe, and the entry point of a quarter to half of the cocaine in Europe, according to an European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) assessment.
In recent years, the violent struggle for the control of drug smuggling through Dutch ports between the local Marrocan “Mocro” mafia and other criminal organizations has prompted warnings against The Netherlands becoming a “narco-state,” the BBC reported.
Rotterdam port customs’ officials seized a total of 38,000 kilos of cocaine last year.