Americas

Americas

Argentine Police Seize 450 kg of Cocaine

15 March 2012 04:31 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Argentinean police have seized about 450 kilograms of cocaine worth $25 million in the port of Buenos Aires, APA reports quoting RIA Novosti.

The drugs were found on Wednesday in bags of charcoal placed in two containers ready to be shipped to Portugal.

â€œOver a thousand bags were placed in two containers, 77 of those had cocaine,â€ a federal police spokesman said.

The seizure was part of "Operation Patagonia," a joint initiative between Spanish, Portuguese and Argentinean authorities aimed at cracking down on illicit drug-trafficking between Argentine and Europe.

The operation scored the first major success in February when police seized a shipment of some 390 kg of cocaine in the port of Lisbon.

At least nine members of an Argentinean drug-trafficking ring have been arrested so far, police said.

Argentina has long been a key transit route for cocaine headed for the United States and Europe.

According to Argentinean officials, illegal cocaine-trafficking in the country doubled in the past four years due to the aggressive counter-narcotics efforts in Colombia and Mexico forcing traffickers to look at alternate routes, combined with weak interdiction efforts in neighboring Bolivia, which is the worldâ€™s third largest producer of cocaine.