Supermarket workers in the Czech Republic found 840 kilograms of cocaine worth CZK 2 billion ($83 million) in boxes of bananas that were delivered to the store. In the north of the country, it entered stores by mistake. A record amount of cocaine arrived in the form of cocaine cubes on Friday. Speaking on public radio in the Czech Republic, Jakob Friedrich, head of the police narcotics department, said the cocaine most likely came from Central America.
Czech police are working on the case with counterparts in unspecified countries, looking for other stores in the country that received boxes of the same shipment, according to the Guardian. The Czech police posted photos of the seized cocaine on their Twitter account and said: “The information indicates that the shipment was destined outside the Czech Republic, so we will cooperate with law enforcement agencies in other countries.”
In 2015, 100 kg of cocaine was found in a Czech supermarket in Prague, and in 1999, Czech police confiscated 117 kg of cocaine packed among dried fruits in a warehouse north of the city. Last week, Italian police announced they had seized 4.3 tons of cocaine worth $257 million in a major blow to Colombian drug cartel Clan del Golfo.
Police said it was one of the largest drug seizures in Europe and came at the conclusion of an international investigation that resulted in arrest warrants for 38 people in six countries: Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Bulgaria, the Netherlands and Colombia. . The investigation lasted more than a year and involved the Colombian judiciary and the US Department of Homeland Security. The police also confiscated 1.85 million euros in cash along with cocaine.
Italian investigators in the northeastern city of Trieste described the operation as “another massive blow to Colombia’s most important drug cartel.” Last November, Colombian authorities announced they were focusing on eliminating the del Golfo clan, whose network spans 28 countries, following the arrest in October of its leader, Dairo Antonio O Suga, better known as O’tonel.
