Customs officers on Tuesday seized 528 kilos of cocaine in a moving container from Martinique, at the port of Marseille, the Ministry of the Economy announced on Friday August 12 in a press release.
According to the Ministry of the Economy, “
the value of the goods is estimated at 37 million euros on the illicit resale market
”.
Tuesday at 7:30 a.m., agents from the Marseille customs brigade checked a moving container, which had just been unloaded from a ship coming from Martinique.
“
When the seals were opened, the agents noted the presence of numerous pieces of furniture and heterogeneous boxes actually characteristic of a move
,” explains the ministry.
But the dog from the customs canine team "
however quickly marked a sofa
".
It was by unscrewing a plywood plate from this sofa that customs officers discovered 54 bars of cocaine.
Other drug loaves were found in seats, armchairs, enclosures, trunks etc, in total 464 packets.
Read alsoDrug trafficking in Marseille “is not an uncontrollable phenomenon”
This discovery follows the implementation in early July by Marseille customs officers of a new system for pooling information from different services: UCIMAR (Marseille maritime targeting unit), intended to better target containers likely to conceal fraudulent goods.
This targeting had already led to the seizure of 70 kg of cocaine in a container, already coming from Martinique, on July 20.
In 2021, French customs officers intercepted 18.4 tons of cocaine.
The market for cocaine, the second most widely used drug in the European Union after cannabis, is "
expanding
", the press release adds.
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