Spanish Authorities Make Record Cocaine Bust Worth Over $550 Million

Law enforce­ment in Spain have seized 9.5 tons of cocaine hid­den in banana ship­ments from Ecuador, mark­ing the coun­try’s largest ever drug bust.

The haul, worth an esti­mat­ed street val­ue of over $550 mil­lion, was uncov­ered by Span­ish cus­toms agents this week. The cocaine was inge­nious­ly con­cealed among 1,080 box­es of bananas in a refrig­er­at­ed ship­ping container.

Var­i­ous logos were imprint­ed on the drug pack­ages, believed to be codes used by the crim­i­nal syn­di­cate due to receive the ship­ment once it arrived in Europe.

This shat­ters Spain’s pre­vi­ous record cocaine seizure in 2018, when author­i­ties uncov­ered 8.4 tons masked in banana crates. Inves­ti­ga­tions into this smug­gling net­work began in July, when police got intel about an immi­nent large-scale cocaine ship­ment rout­ed through Ecuador.

The orga­ni­za­tion oper­at­ed out of a banana export­ing com­pa­ny in Ecuador, export­ing up to 40 drug-filled con­tain­ers per month along with legit­i­mate fruit ship­ments. The con­fis­cat­ed drugs were des­tined for Por­tu­gal before wider dis­tri­b­u­tion across Europe, author­i­ties said.

The bust deals a major blow to one of the world’s most sig­nif­i­cant cocaine traf­fick­ing groups. But no arrests have been made yet as inves­ti­ga­tions continue.

With mul­ti-ton busts hap­pen­ing more fre­quent­ly, author­i­ties are ramp­ing up efforts against brazen tac­tics used by smug­glers. The 9.5 ton seizure shows traf­fick­ers will go to great lengths to con­ceal drugs in unsus­pect­ing shipments.

But improved law enforce­ment intel­li­gence and col­lab­o­ra­tion has led to land­mark cocaine inter­dic­tions, inflict­ing dam­age on dan­ger­ous crim­i­nal enter­pris­es. Spain has now bro­ken its own record twice in just a few years, strip­ping bil­lions in illic­it rev­enue from these organizations.