The drug was hidden on a ship that arrived from Nicaragua, the customs service reported
Agents of the Russian Federal Customs Service (FTS) have intercepted a shipment of cocaine weighing over a metric ton, the agency reported on Wednesday. The drug was being smuggled in a cargo container that was brought from Nicaragua to the Port of Saint Petersburg, it said.
A total of 1,000 bricks of pressed white powder, which lab tests identified as the illegal substance, were recovered from the vessel. The operation was conducted jointly with the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), whose mandate includes guarding the border.
The customs service reported the precise weight of the batch: 1,001 kilograms and 260 grams. However, it offered conflicting estimates of its street value: a social media press release put it at 11 billion rubles ($123.2 million), but in a video statement, a spokesperson said it was worth 8 billion rubles ($89.6 million) on the black market. The discrepancy may be due to a difference between the projected wholesale price and what selling it through dealers would have earned.
Pictures of the intercepted drugs showed the packages labeled ‘Dior’ and ‘BBB’ laid out on the ground in front of a stack of containers. The service lampooned the use of the French fashion label to mark the cocaine, releasing an image of a bewildered cat covered in powder along with its photos of the bust.
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Last April, 699 kilograms of cocaine were seized by the FSB in Moscow Region. In December, a 673kg shipment of the same drug, which originated in Latin America, was intercepted in Moscow, before it could be smuggled to Europe.