Greek police said Sunday they seized nearly 600 pounds of cocaine with an estimated value of over $6.5 million. The cocaine was hidden inside a container of bananas imported from Ecuador, they said, marking yet another instance of drugs being found concealed in the fruit.
Police had been informed by the United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency that the cocaine would be carried by a ship headed to the northern Greek port of Thessaloniki.
Three men were arrested, officials said.
Police officers found the cocaine and removed most of the drugs contained in brick-sized packages from the container before it was loaded into a truck.
Police released a short video of the removal operation, showing bricks falling from a container that was opened by officers. Authorities also released images of the purported drugs, showing dozens of bricks labeled with the word “Diesel.”
Greek Police
The truck headed for the Athens suburb of Aspropyrgos, more than 300 miles to the south, where the police arrested three men as they opened the container Saturday.
The total amount of cocaine seized was 598 pounds, police said.
The arrested men include two Greeks, the 40-year-old owner of a haulage company, a 32-year-old and a 47-year-old Bulgarian citizen, police say, adding that the Bulgarian was in touch with a drug gang and organized the picking up and transport of the container. The 32-year-old was in charge of distributing the drug through unnamed gang members.
Police are looking for more people they say belong to a drug distribution gang. The three arrested men will face a prosecutor Monday.
Bananas frequently used to hide cocaine
Cocaine has been found hidden in banana shipments across the globe in recent months.
In July, Russia said it seized 1,800 pounds of cocaine hidden under a shipment of bananas, calling it its largest bust of drugs from Latin America this year.
In May, employees at a Norwegian fruit distributor discovered a packet of cocaine in a box of bananas, alerting customs officials who found a stash of 147 kilos.
Last December, authorities in the Dominican Republic confiscated nearly 9.5 tons of cocaine from a banana shipment at the country’s most important seaport.
In August 2024, customs agents seized more than 200 pounds of cocaine at the port in Greece from a ship carrying the fruit. The month before that, police dogs in Ecuador helped find more than six tons of cocaine hidden in a banana shipment headed to Germany.
In March last year, Bulgarian customs officials confiscated about 170 kilograms of cocaine from a ship transporting bananas from Ecuador.
The month before that, British authorities said they found more than 12,500 pounds of cocaine hidden in a shipment of the fruit, breaking the record for the biggest single seizure of hard drugs in the country.