(Quito) Ecuador has seized at least 3.2 tonnes of cocaine, two of which were concealed in a container loaded with bananas bound for Europe, police said on Saturday.
Posted at 4:23 p.m.
“Investigations led to the seizure of more than two tons of cocaine inside a #GYE container (from Guayaquil, in the west, editor’s note), which was destined for Europe,” police said in a statement. tweet.
And “thanks to the inspection of a container of bananas for export, 87 boxes with (in total) one ton 213 kilos of cocaine were found elsewhere”, in another port in the coastal province of Guayas (west ), added the Ecuadorian police.
Ecuador, a Latin American country located between Colombia and Peru, the world’s main producers of cocaine, confiscated a record 210 tons of drugs, mostly white powder, in 2021.
Seizures since the beginning of this year exceed 100 tonnes.
According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Ecuador was the third country for the amount of cocaine seized in 2020, behind Colombia and the United States.
Thus, the Ecuadorian authorities seized 6.5% of the 1,424 tons confiscated worldwide, according to a report by the UN agency published in June.