Cocaine worth £2,750,000 found crammed in banana containers

Police in the north of Greece have uncovered 100 bricks of cocaine hidden among bunches of bananas.

The containers were passing through the port of Piraeus, as part of a shipment from South America.

After transporting the suspicious containers to Thessaloniki, officers found drugs weighing 161kg tucked inside.

The total value of the cocaine found yesterday is estimated to be €3,200,000 or £2.75 million.

It is believed that the drugs would have been distributed around Greece and wider Europe if they had not been intercepted.

For several weeks, Greece has been carrying out a joint investigation with North Macedonian authorities and the US Drug Enforcement Administration.

Last month, they found around 100kg of cocaine at a warehouse in Thessaloniki, also hidden in containers of bananas.

There have been 14 arrests made relating to that discovery, including several people believed to belong to an international organised crime ring.

In that case, the fruit shipment was ordered and paid for by a company based in the North Macedonian capital of Skopje.

While the size of Saturday’s discovery was significant, it’s fairly tiny compared to a consignment found in Portugal at the beginning of May.

Yet again smuggled via a container of bananas, the cocaine seized at the port of Setubal, south of Lisbon, weighed 4.2 tonnes and was worth around €100 million.

In the past few years, the drug has also been found creatively hidden in shipments of oranges, sweet potatoes, soy flour and Covid masks.

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