Cocaine is one of the most consumed drugs that maintains a complex global drug trafficking market where huge amounts of money are moved. Smugglers resort to all kinds of more or less ingenious systems to move the product, with a trend that has been imposed lately: hide the cocaine between bananas or bananas. And it is not by chance.
You just have to use the newspaper library of recent years or even months to add examples, both in Spain and in different European countries, with a special prevalence in United Kingdom.
One of the most recent cases happened last July, when the British police discovered a shipment of cocaine valued at 40 million pounds (just over 47 million euros) hidden in a shipment of bananas, located in the port of Thames. They had arrived by boat from Colombia and were on their way to the Netherlands. And in April this year, four tons of cocaine with a potential value of 300 million pounds were intercepted, the largest seizure in Britain since 2015.
In June, eight tons of the same drug were also found in a batch of Colombian bananas, this time in the Portuguese port of Setúbaland a few weeks before czech authorities They found 840 kg of cocaine among unpackaged bananas in several supermarkets in the country. There are examples all over Europe, from Montenegro to Belgium, where a farmer found drug bricks among the fruit he had just bought to sell on his farm.
In Spain We are also served by similar cases that have been dotting the press in the last decade. One of the most striking takes us back to 2010, when the National Police located some 100 kg of cocaine among boxes of bananas that were going to be distributed by various Lidl supermarkets in our country. In 2014 the Civil Guard intervened 600 kg in a container of bananas in the port of Algeciras, the same point where in 2016 179 kg were also seized between boxes of this fruit. and they are just Some examples from a list that seems to grow every year.
Cocaine and bananas, a couple not at all casual
This surprising accumulation of cases seems far from casual, nor is it due to a lack of creativity or laziness on the part of drug traffickers. As a result of the succession of similar news in just a few months, the VICE media has investigated the matter a bit to try to find a common pattern or some specific reason that leads them to opt for the banana.
And the reasons are several, in addition to well thought out, absolutely logical. First, Brexit has influenced in which a large part of the cocaine that arrives in the United Kingdom, with high figures of consumption of this drug, does so among American bananas, as imports from European countries such as Spain or Portugal are drastically reduced.
But, as the organized crime expert tells VICE Jerry McDermottco-director and co-founder of Insight Crime, the first reason is purely geographical. Colombia is one of the main banana exporters, and its largest producing region, Urabá, is also home to one of the country’s largest drug gangs. The characteristics of this fruit and its necessities to travel they facilitate the task of hiding and transporting the drug, since they are highly perishable.
The transportation needs of the banana facilitate the hiding place of the drug
In this way, criminals can hide the cocaine from its own place of production, almost always hiding it in shipments of other people’s bananas -although not always-, ready to sail to Europe. The refrigerated containers The thick walls facilitate its hiding and conservation, and they take advantage of the fact that customs do not usually retain or check the content too carefully, since the banana must travel quickly.
Europe and the United Kingdom import large quantities of bananas or American bananas and they are not very expensive products, compared to other possible commodities; It is another point in favor to make things easier for traffickers. If they were hidden among more valuable or exclusive objects, the controls would be more exhaustive.
The authorities and agents of the fight against drug trafficking are aware of this link between fruit and drugs, but it is impossible to control all the containers that sail daily to the old continent. And yet, more and more cases are uncovered.
Joie 77700 Banana Stand, Green/Brown, 12X19X29 Cm
Pictures | Unsplash – NCA – Civil Guard
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