More than 400 million euros (£353 million) worth of cocaine found floating off the coast of Sicily has been seized in a “record” haul by Italy’s Finance Police.
Two tons of the Class A drug were found near the port of Catania by authorities concealed in numerous small packages held together by fishing nets and a signalling device so they could be tracked. Plastic wrapping prevented the drugs from getting wet.
The drugs could have been left at sea by a cargo ship, to be recovered and transported to the mainland, Italy’s Finance Police said in a statement on Monday.
The Economic and Financial Police Unit of the Financial Police of Catania was activated and an aircraft was used to search for the possibility of further parcels being lost at sea in the surrounding area.
Police deployed dinghies to recover the drugs and later found that the packages contained 1,600 packets of cocaine.
Specialised teams inspecting the packages found “a whitish powder” which tested as cocaine in preliminary tests.
“It was possible to ascertain the particular care of the packaging, probably aimed at avoiding infiltrations of water in order to preserve the contents and, at the same time, avoid the danger of sinking,” the Finance Police said.
“The peculiar packaging methods and the presence of a luminous device to allow it to be traced led to the hypothesis that it could be a cargo of drugs, probably left at sea by one of the cargo ships that ply that stretch of coast to be subsequently recovered and transported on the mainland.”
It comes just months after 3.2 tonnes (3.5 tons) of cocaine floating in the Pacific Ocean near New Zealand was discovered in a record haul by local authorities.
The seized drugs, wrapped in 81 packages, were reportedly enough to supply the whole of Australia for a year and New Zealand for 30 years.
Authorities said the drugs were dropped there by an international drug-smuggling syndicate. The wholesale value was estimated to be worth 500 million New Zealand dollars (£262.5 million).
