ROME (Reuters) – Almost 2 tonnes of cocaine with a market value of more than 400 million euros ($440 million) were found floating at sea off eastern Sicily, Italy’s tax and customs police said on Monday.
The Guardia di Finanza called it a “record” seizure.
The drugs were stored in about 70 waterproof packages, carefully sealed, held together by fishermen’s nets and equipped with a luminous signalling device, the police said in a statement.
The “peculiar packaging methods and the presence of a luminous device to allow tracking” suggest the haul was dumped at sea by a cargo ship in order for it to be recovered later, the statement added.
($1 = 0.9110 euros)
(Reporting by Alvise Armellini; Editing by Crispian Balmer)
