cocaine discovered inside cassava tubers sold in supermarket

Cocaine was discovered, between Tuesday April 19 and Thursday April 21, inside cassava sold in Leclerc supermarkets in Orly (Val-de-Marne) and Fleury-Mérogis (Essonne), franceinfo learned on Friday April 22 from concordant sources, confirming information from the newspaper Le Parisien. The cassava had been cut in half beforehand and emptied in order to slip in cylindrical sachets of white powder.

On Tuesday, a customer of the Leclerc supermarket in Fleury-Mérogis and wife of a policeman informed the management of the establishment after finding a suspicious product inside her cassava purchased in the store. On the spot, the gendarmes, with the help of a sniffer dog, then discovered four kilos in thirteen cassavas sold on the spot. This amount of drugs is worth about 300,000 euros on resale.

On Thursday, a supermarket customer similarly notified the store’s management after finding a suspicious object inside a cassava purchased from the establishment. Warned by management, the police arrived at the store around 9 p.m. On site, they discovered that several cassava tubers contained a sachet of cocaine. These products come from a supplier working at the Rungis market.

An employee of the Leclerc supermarket was also arrested for using two cassava to recover the bags. The employee in question explained that he planned to resell the drugs. He was taken into custody. An investigation was opened and entrusted to the judicial police of Val-de-Marne.