Amsterdam, May 18, (dpa/GNA) – Dutch customs discovered cocaine valued at €34 million ($37 million) in a container destined for a German company, prosecutors in Rotterdam said on Thursday.
Customs officials in the port of Rotterdam found 450 1-kilogramme packs of cocaine hidden among canned fruit.
The cocaine was loaded onto a ship in Panama and was to have been unloaded in the Belgian port of Antwerp. The German company importing the fruit is not suspected of being involved in the drug smuggling, they said.
Dutch prosecutors said the cocaine had been destroyed.
The European law enforcement agency Europol said last month that drugs were increasingly being smuggled into Europe’s main ports via shipping containers.
Some 90 million containers arrive at EU seaports every year, with only a small number being checked for contraband.
Last year, Dutch and Belgian authorities found close to 200 tons of cocaine in Rotterdam and Antwerp.
GNA