Italian police seized $286 million worth of pure cocaine hidden inside a shipment of bananas at the port of Vado Ligure.
Italian police seized approximately 1,700 pounds of pure cocaine with an estimated street value of $286 million at the port of Vado Ligure. The illicit drug was concealed within a refrigerated container from Ecuador among dozens of pallets of bananas. Authorities released a video showing officers extracting the drugs from the shipment. This discovery follows a previous seizure of 340 kilograms of cocaine at the same port earlier this month. Because Vado Ligure is a growing European trade hub, officials have increased monitoring of the location as a primary transit point for international criminal networks. Cocaine hidden in banana shipments is a recurring global phenomenon. Recent seizures have occurred in the United Kingdom, Greece, Russia, Norway, the Dominican Republic, and Ecuador. In many instances, the tropical fruit serves as an ideal vessel for traffickers to transport large quantities of the drug across oceans.