Ship Carrying One Tonne of Cocaine Busted on New African Drug Route

Last updated on September 11th, 2021 at 08:24 am

Busted at the Sea

Vast blue waters and open sparkling air. Nothing out of the normal right here barring a Croatian-flagged sailing boat 163 km west of La Palma, the Canary Islands carrying simply underneath a tonne of cocaine organised into 980 1kg packets with an estimated market fee of over 40 million euros.

The ship, manned by three Croatian nationals from the telephone of the Balkan cartel now in police custody, was once intercepted on Saturday in the place of international waters described as the “new African maritime route for worldwide drug trafficking.” Its remaining destination, Spain and Croatia.

Eyes on Africa

According to drug trafficking authorities, today, the essential subject and the new undertaking is Africa as Colombian and Venezuelan drug traffickers have installed a long-term and solid presence on the continent, in the Gulf of Guinea, West Africa — setting up legal cowl businesses, fisheries, canneries as a cover for their unlawful activities so as to have fleets that enable operate giant cargos across excessive seas.

In addition, with the nearby complicity of the political or navy apparatus on the African continent, the cocaine is additionally stored on the African continent as an integrated operation permits the drug’s movement via air and land enormously with the aid of the Sahel-Saharan strip, which crosses the north of Niger, Mali and the south of Algeria — and subsequently finds its way lower back to the cannabis route and the Mediterranean.

(AFP)