The biggest cocaine haul has been found by police in Philadelphia port, TVNZ news agency reported. Police call it one of the largest drug busts in US history.
The cocaine’s worth more than $1bn, the package was found on the MSC Gayane in Philadelphia’s Packer Marine Terminal. To hide the drugs, Ivan Durasevic and Fonofaavae Tiasage, both crew members on the ship, used seven ship containers on board. They helped load the drugs onto the container ship while it was at sea, according to an affidavit.
Now, both they are charged after some 16.5 tons of cocaine has been found on a ship. According to Philadelphia police, that is one of the biggest drugs seizures in US history.
The US attorney William McSwain commented on the police raid, saying that amount of drugs could kill millions of people.
Drug traffickers are looking for the new markets
In 2017, the US State Department warned of “troubling signs” that the drug’s use and availability were “on the rise for the first time in nearly a decade”. Most of the world’s cocaine is consumed in the US, statistics shows.
More recently, traffickers have been trying to open a new market for the drug by mixing it with fentanyl, another illegal drug, which becomes popular in the USA.
