The Italian police have claimed to have confiscated more than two tonnes of cocaine with a sales value of around half a billion euros. The cocaine was packed last week in 60 bags in the port of Genoa been discovered, the investigators said now. The sacks were therefore in a ship container from Colombia with the Spanish metropolis Barcelona as a destination.
It is the largest cocaine finding in 25 years, the police said. The drugs came from several crime syndicates working with the so-called Gulf clan. This notorious Colombian drug cartel accounts for around 70 percent of cocaine production in Colombia. It uses violence and intimidation to control the production and trafficking of cocaine.
The attack against the cartel was reportedly preceded during investigations by the Italian police, together with colleagues from Colombia, Great Britain and Spain, during Operation Genoese Snow. In the police operation, a 59-year-old man from Spain was arrested.
Already on Wednesday, the discovery of almost 650 kilograms of cocaine in the northern Italian port city of Livorno had been announced. The drugs were hidden in a shipping container with coffee beans and had a value of 130 million euros. Also this container, which had come from Honduras and in Costa Rica on another ship had been loaded, should have been transported according to the police to Barcelona.