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Drug packages and coffee sacks: Swiss police present cocaine find
Photo: POLICE CANTONALE FRIBORG / via REUTERS
500 kilograms of cocaine have been seized on the premises of a Nespresso factory in Switzerland.
Employees of the Nestlé subsidiary discovered a white substance when unloading sacks of freshly delivered coffee beans on Monday, according to the police in the canton of Friborg on Thursday.
They then alerted the police.
The officers searched a total of five shipping containers that had been delivered to the factory premises by train that day.
According to the information, they seized more than 500 kilograms of cocaine.
The coffee-making facilities did not come into contact with the cocaine.
According to initial investigations, the coffee delivery came from Brazil.
According to the police, the confiscated cocaine has a sales value of around 48 million euros.
The investigators assume that the drugs were intended for the European market.
Only at the end of April did it become known that investigators had broken up an international gang of drug smugglers.
The group is said to have shipped more than 23 tons of cocaine from South and Central America to the European Union.
Customs investigators discovered 16 tons in February 2021 in the port of Hamburg alone.
20 arrested in raid on drug dealers
In a large-scale raid, apartments and business premises in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and Paraguay were searched.
Around 20 suspects have been arrested for the time being – including suspected masterminds.
The "Joint Investigation Group on Drugs" (GER) from the LKA and the Hanover Customs Investigation Office had been on the trail of the internationally active drug smugglers since 2020, it said.
In March 2021 there was a first major raid with many arrests.
Several suspects have already been convicted.
By decoding messages in the messenger service Sky ECC, the authorities got on the track of international drug smuggling.
jok/AFP
