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The Italian police seized in the port of Gioia Tauro, in Calabria (to the south), almost a ton of cocaine hidden in a container with frozen seafood (choritos) from Coronel, Chilesaid that law enforcement agency in a statement on Thursday.
The 932 kilos of cocaine, almost pureThey were hidden in 800 bars spread over 37 bags and would have contributed “some 186 million euros” (about 220 million dollars) to the drug market, the police estimated.
The seizure was the result of a major investigation and supervision operation of the merchandise that passes through the largest port of Calabria, land of the ‘Ndrangheta, the feared Calabrian mafia, with ramifications throughout Latin America.
The seizure was possible thanks to “risk analysis”, a system that allows the identification of potentially suspicious containers based on a series of elements such as origin, cargo, destination and routes.
More than 2,200 containers from the American continent were inspected by special scanners, the statement said.
The “box” in which the drug was hidden was identified with that system.
#GDF me @AdmGov from #Reggio Calabria #sequestrano 932 Kg di #cocaine more pure in the port of #GioiaTauro.#NoiconVoi pic.twitter.com/ThDUTd6OC1
– Finance Police (@GDF) November 5, 2020
The mob and … Colonel?
The “Ndrangheta”, present in Europe and with connections throughout the American continent, Africa and Asia, has become the only criminal organization present in practically the entire planet thanks to the cocaine trafficking, as Nicola Grattera, a magistrate specialized in fighting the mafia.
Based on a family structure, it is mainly located in Calabria, where it usually has the port of Goia Tauro, the largest in southern Italy, for illegal drug trafficking.
Over the years its tentacles have spread to other ports, so between 2016 and 2017 significant seizures were recorded elsewhere in Italy and Europe.
According to a recent police report, cited by the Italian daily La Repubblica, the organization decided to “go home” and turn the port of Gioia Tauro into the largest headquarters for drug trafficking.
According to the Pauta slogan, the boat that transported the drugs – baptized as Arica – had passages through Colombia and Peru before reaching Coronel, Bío Bío region, from where it finally set sail for Panama and Italy.
As Luis Toledo, director of the Specialized Unit for Illicit Narcotics Trafficking of the National Prosecutor’s Office, explained to the aforementioned media, “it is not clear yet whether the ship was infected in a Chilean port or in Panama.”
“We do not have the traceability to deny that it was loaded in Chile,” he said.
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