Massive cocaine shipment stopped on the way to Libya

The 612kg worth of cocaine was intercepted by Maltese customs on their way to Libya from Ecuador, with an estimated street value of 69 million euros, this is considered the largest drug haul in Malta’s history.

A physical inspection was called for after irregularities in the density of the cargo appeared on the scanned image of the shipment, leading officials to offload one of the pallets and discover the record amount of drugs.

The significance of the drug haul was emphasised by the Maltese Customs in a statement, “This haul was a record-breaker due to the high value and amount from a single container. To get a better perspective, during 2019 a total of 750kg (84.5 million euro) were intercepted by Customs from 16 containers,”

Malta Finance Minister Clyde Caruana commended the efforts of the Customs Department and the historic drug haul “I wish to applaud the Customs Department for making a record drug seizure in the past hours equivalent to the amount normally seized in a whole year, the value runs into tens of millions of euros.” Said the Minister in an announcement of the discovery to the parliament.