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Undercover operation leads to major cocaine bust

Undercover operation leads to major cocaine bust

Four men were arrested on Wednesday as authorities seized 210 kilograms of cocaine that was transferred from Ecuador to Piraeus port in a container with frozen shrimps.

The case involved an undercover operation lasting at least a month, during which a police agent managed to infiltrate the ranks of the drug ring.

The bust was made by the Attica Narcotics Sub-Division, with the assistance of the financial crime unit (SDOE) and the US Drug Enforcement Agency and occurred amid record seizures of cocaine at European ports over the past year.

The four men, three Albanians and a Greek, have long rap sheets involving weapons, ammunition and fenethylline (Captagon) pills.

They were nabbed after the undercover agent convinced them that he could get the drugs out of the port and transport them to a safe place where they could collect them. The agent led the defendants to the designated place in Piraeus but upon their arrival the members of the ring saw not only the cocaine but the barrels of police guns pointed at them.

Authorities found 131,675 euros in cash in their possession – an amount suspected to be part of the undercover agent’s fee for transporting the cargo of drugs out of Piraeus’ Third Customs Office.

The container started its journey from the port of Guayaquil in Ecuador. The legal cargo chosen was not bananas, as is more common, but frozen shrimps. The cocaine contained in 180 nylon packages was loaded into the container by the so-called rip-on/rip-off method, probably during a stop made by the cargo ship in Panama. The method entails members of the ship’s crew or corrupt port officials breaking the seals of a container and dumping the bags of cocaine inside. They then affix a new, forged seal. At the final destination, the drugs are removed from the container in a similar way.

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