The sniffing of a police anti-drug dog detected almost 3 tons of pure cocaine hidden in a box of bananas in the port of Gioia Tauro in Reggio Calabria, Italy, officials said in a statement.
The discovery of the dog, named “Joel,” was made in conjunction with his colleagues in the canine unit and some sophisticated scanners, which helped identify the narcotic hidden in the shipment, News Italy 24 reports.
Stacked in containers, the shipment of bananas concealing the cocaine came from Ecuador and was being sent to Armenia, Italian officials said, the European media reported.
Customs officials inspecting shipments arriving from South America, many of which contained exotic fruits, found the cocaine hidden in the containers in various ways.
Reuters reported that they found the drug among the fruits, hidden in false bottoms or in external caches in the containers, authorities said.
The street value of the drug would have generated traffickers “an income of more than 800 million euros,” the agency reported, equivalent to some $869 million dollars.
Collaboration between international drug unions and drug unions in the European Union has grown due to what an analysis by the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction called the “historically high availability” of cocaine.
The analysis notes that “high levels of cocaine production in South America have resulted in record amounts being seized in Europe.”
Cocaine is the second most widely used drug in the European Union, after only marijuana, according to the analysis, which estimates that the EU is a $10.5 billion market for cocaine.
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