ROME: Italian police seized 49 kilograms of pure cocaine hidden in a squid (Illex argentinus) shipment from Argentina.
The Argentine ship had left the port of Mar del Plata, in the province of Buenos Aires, and was moored in the port of the town of Gioia Tauro, in the province of Reggio, Calabria.
According to the prosecutor Federico Cafiero De Raho, the cocaine, valued at EUR 10 million, was camouflaged in boxes containing frozen squid.
While the Italian police intensified port controls, so far nobody has been arrested in connection with the case.
Sources consulted by FIS.com indicated that in that zone of Italy the influence of the ‘Ndrangheta’, a branch of the Italian Calabrian mafia managing various businesses linked to drug trafficking, is well-known.
According to the agency DyN, agents of the General Directorate of Customs in Mar del Plata had scanned the container before the ship set sail and had not detected the drug cargo inside the vessel.
Apparently, the drug would have been placed at another time, possibly on a stop of the boat in Brazil, as the security seal that the shipment had when it arrived in Italy was not the original one.
It must be recalled that one of the alleged leaders of the Calabrian criminal organization, Pantaleone Mancuso, was arrested in August last year in Argentina, while trying to enter Brazil, and was extradited in February this year to Italy.
