COLOMBIA: The Colombian Anti-drug Police seized 3.2 tons of cocaine in the Caribbean port city of Cartagena, from where the drug was to have been shipped to Mexico, the department announced.
During the course of conducting cargo inspections, law enforcement authorities discovered the drug hidden in a shipment of organic mineral fertilizer.
“During the inspection performed on a container that was to be sent to Mexico, we saw that in its interior apparently there was organic fertilizer and upon conducting the identification test it gave a positive reaction for cocaine,” the director of the Anti-drug Police, Gen. Ricardo Alberto Restrepo, told reporters.
Restrepo said that the Attorney General’s Office is investigating the Bogota Company that was exporting the alleged fertilizer and a customs firm based in Cartagena.
He added that in November 2014 in Barranquilla, also on the Caribbean coast, Colombian authorities seized 193 kilograms of cocaine that were to have been sent to Costa Rica, a shipment also camouflaged as organic fertilizer.
He also said that test results are still pending on yet another shipment of organic fertilizer destined for Europe that was to have been shipped from the port of Santa Marta.
Restrepo went on to say that the seizures point up the relationship between Colombian and Mexican drug traffickers who use business fronts to ship illegal narcotics.
