Police mentioned Wednesday they’d seized sufficient cocaine to provide New Zealand for 30 years, after snaring an enormous bundle of medicine floating within the Pacific Ocean.
New Zealand police commissioner Andrew Coster informed reporters the haul — containing 81 bales of cocaine — weighed 3.2 tons and had a avenue worth of round $316 million.
“This is the largest find of illicit drugs by New Zealand’s agencies by some margin,” he mentioned.
Officials consider the medication have been dropped at a “floating transit point” within the Pacific Ocean, the place they might have been picked up and brought to Australia.
A police picture confirmed the large haul was sure by netting and coated in yellow floats. Some of the bales had a Batman image on them, and the packages of cocaine inside are labelled with what seemed to be a four-leaf clover print.
“We believe it was destined for Australia, where it would have been enough to service the market for one year,” Coster mentioned.
“It is more than New Zealand would use in 30 years.”
A naval boat intercepted the bundle, which was drifting a whole bunch of kilometres northwest of New Zealand, thanks partially to intelligence from the “Five Eyes” alliance.
The decades-old intelligence-sharing community includes the US, Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand.
Coster described the bust as a “huge result” for police in each New Zealand and Australia.
“There is no doubt this discovery lands a major financial blow right from the South American producers through to the distributors of this product,” he added.
Officials mentioned it was too early to say the place the medication got here from. —Agence France-Presse
Source: www.gmanetwork.com
