The officials of the customs agency of La Spezia, the financiers of the Guardia di Finanza and the Ros dei Carabinieri completed a complex and articulated operation that led to the seizure, inside the merchant port of the Ligurian city, of 412 kg of cocaine.
The drug was hidden in a container from the Dominican Republic bound for the port of Valencia on which a forged seal had been placed.
The cocaine, hidden in a load of waste paper, was divided into 12 packs containing 359 blocks ready to be taken with the so-called rip-off system, which consists in placing the drug immediately behind the doors of the container so that it could be easily picked up by traffickers during the stop of goods in port areas.
The cocaine was of the highest quality and purity and would have yielded, once it was placed on the market, over 100 million euros.
The activity "is part of the constant monitoring of shipments from South America - reads a note - which had already allowed huge drug seizures in the port of La Spezia".
Two years ago, 338 kg of cocaine hidden inside granite slabs from Brazil were found and seized.
(Unioneonline / vl)
