The US just confiscated a $180 million boat shipment of cocaine from Colombian drug traffickers
US Coast Guard
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) found 5.28 tonnes of the drug aboard the vessel, captured in international waters off Central America, said Alexandra Ladino, director of the attorney general's specialized police force, which cooperated with the DEA on the operation.
The Panamanian-flagged boat had earlier departed the Colombian port city of Buenaventura, Ladino said. The drugs belonged to a Colombian trafficking group, which she said would not be named for fear of compromising further investigations.
Fourteen crew members, from Colombia and other Latin American countries, were detained and will be processed in the United States, Ladino told reporters.
Colombia, a major cocaine producer, manufactures some 300 tonnes annually, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Authorities confiscated about 166 tonnes of the drug in 2014.
Marxist rebels, gangs made up of ex-paramilitaries and small cartels dominate much of Colombia's narcotics trade. Cocaine and other drugs are some of the principal sources of financing for groups fighting in the country's 50-year civil war, which has killed over 200,000 people.
(Reporting by Luis Jaime Acosta; Writing by Julia Symmes Cobb; Editing by Frances Kerry)
- Love in the time of elections: Do politics spice up or spoil dating in India?
- Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus review – the best smartphone in the S24 lineup
- Household savings dip over Rs 9 lakh cr in 3 years to Rs 14.16 lakh cr in 2022-23
- Misleading ads: SC says public figures must act with responsibility while endorsing products
- Here’s what falling inside a black hole would look like, according to a NASA supercomputer simulation
- Nothing Phone (2a) blue edition launched
- JNK India IPO allotment date
- JioCinema New Plans
- Realme Narzo 70 Launched
- Apple Let Loose event
- Elon Musk Apology
- RIL cash flows
- Charlie Munger
- Feedbank IPO allotment
- Tata IPO allotment
- Most generous retirement plans
- Broadcom lays off
- Cibil Score vs Cibil Report
- Birla and Bajaj in top Richest
- Nestle Sept 2023 report
- India Equity Market