GEORGETOWN: A Guyanese is among three persons who have been charged in Greece after authorities there intercepted cocaine that was concealed in containers of scrap iron shipped from Guyana.
According to a GRReporter report, 27.170 kilogrammes of pure cocaine, worth an estimated €1.5 million, was confiscated in the bust.
It added that the criminal organisation shipped in significant amounts of cocaine in containers from South America to Greece and other European countries. It also said other members of the organisation in Guyana, Greece and the Netherlands are still being sought through international police cooperation.
This latest bust has once again highlighted the fact that cocaine continues to leave Guyana through many means. Observers have pointed out that the case is another black eye for local authorities as the Guyanese managed to arrange the shipment here without being detected and it took international agencies to make the bust on the container’s arrival in another country.
The Guyanese, 48, and his two alleged accomplices, a Greek national identified as a former top model and a Netherlands national, were charged with the creation of, and participation in, a criminal organisation and for violating the law on addictive substances.
The bust was carried out by the anti-drug department of Attica’s Security Directorate, in cooperation with the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) office at the US Embassy in Athens, the Office for Combating Economic Crimes and other police units.
According to the report, at the start of this year the Guyanese, operating mainly in the Netherlands, and the Greek, were trying to establish a foothold in cocaine imports and create a network of their own. They apparently did so by continuously trafficking cocaine to be retailed in Greece and in other European countries.
The news report said that those involved shipped an experimental legitimate shipment of scrap iron from Guyana to Greece. Having met with success, they shipped two more containers, which arrived in Greece on August 28th at the port of Piraeus and these were also loaded with scrap. One of them, however, contained the cocaine hidden in vehicle axles that were especially retrofitted for the purpose.
The cocaine load was to be recovered by the group members and to do this the Greek and the Dutchman arrived at the warehouse where the containers were stored and were arrested by the police while extracting the drugs.
Around the same time, the Guyanese who organised the shipment was arrested in a central Athens hotel. He had arrived in Greece two days prior to oversee the load’s reception and further distribution. The GRReporter said €1,365, US$3,100 and G$1,000 were found on his person.
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