Police found 13 tonnes of the class A drug hidden behind bananas in a cargo container that sailed from Ecuador.
Spain’s biggest ever drug bust
Spanish authorities have shared dramatic footage of a raid on a property linked to the seizing of 13 tonnes of cocaine, in what they described as the biggest anti-narcotics operation in the country’s history.
Officials found bricks of drugs hidden in a shipment of bananas in a container from Ecuador at the port of Algeciras in southern Spain last month, police said yesterday.
The haul, described as the second largest anti-narcotics operation in the EU, had an eyewatering street value of £659m, according to 2022 mean prices from the European Union Drugs Agency.
The whole sale price is estimated to have been at £387.5m.
The cargo container had sailed from Guayaquil, Ecuador.
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Dramatic footage shows the police hammering down the entrance to a property and searching it.
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Officers can also be seen trying to break a safety box before a woman is detained at what appears to be a separate location.
The final shots show police officers loading the drugs, appearing in the form of green bricks, on vans.
The operation, in collaboration with the Ecuadorian police, resulted in five raids and one arrest.
The Ecuadorian export company was on police and customs records for a history of “illicit trafficking,” according to the police. Police are looking for two of its managers.
To date, the largest drug seizures in Spain was 9.4 tonnes in 2023, and another 8.7 tonnes five years earlier.
Ecuador intercepted a total of 204 tonnes of drugs between January and September this year, almost the annual average for the past three years, government figures show.
