PARIS: A Venezuelan court sentenced three soldiers and seven civilians to two decades in prison for shipping more than a ton of cocaine to France, officials said Tuesday.
The three airport customs officers were arrested after 1.3 tons of the drug were seized in Paris in September 2013, smuggled aboard an Air France flight from Caracas.
The trio, who worked at the Maiquetia international airport, and their seven conspirators were convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to 22 and a half years each by a court in the northern state of Vargas, the state prosecutor’s office said in a statement. One of the men’s wives was sentenced to 10 years for money laundering, it said.
Seventeen other defendants were acquitted, but prosecutors have appealed. The alleged money man behind the plot, Harry Augusto Romero, is the next up for trial, after being arrested in Colombia last year and extradited to Venezuela earlier this month.
