Federal officials in Brazil intercepted a shipment of 2,052 kilos of cocaine on Friday at the port of Santos in the country’s southeast, near São Paulo. It was the biggest bust ever made at the port, according to Brazil’s Federal Revenue service.
Brazilian Revenue officials found the drugs at a container terminal at a wharf in Guaruja. During a survey of the containers, customs officials found hundreds of tablets of the drug in three containers, hidden among legal, declared shipments of coffee, sugar, and soy.
One container held 1.1 tons of cocaine, another had 500 kilos, and the rest was in the third.
The containers were to be loaded on a ship called the Cap San Marco, set to arrive at the port this weekend, and were destined for Hamburg, Germany; Le Havre, France, and Algeciras, Spain, port authorities told news site Globo .
Authorities suspected the cocaine was hidden in the containers after they arrived at the terminal. An investigation will be opened to identify the people responsible for the shipment as well as those involved in the attempt to sneak the drugs into the legitimate cargo, according to Globo.
Santos was the busiest port in Latin America in 2016, according to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. That year, the port saw 3.4 million TEUs , each of which is equivalent to one standard 20-foot-long shipping container. The port accounts for nearly one-third of Brazil’s trade.
The three-square-mile port complex in Santos is surrounded by upscale beachfront condos and three sprawling favelas, which are made up of huts mounted on stilts. The port itself has over the past year processed many of the goods driving the country’s protracted recovery from a deep recession, according to a Bloomberg report published late last year.
