Italian police dog sniffs out 3 tons of cocaine hidden in banana shipment

The fine nose of an anti-drug dog named Joel alongside his colleagues in the canine unit and some sophisticated scanners helped sniff out 2,734 kg of pure cocaine hidden in a case of bananas in the port of Gioia Tauro, Italian officials said in a news release. 

Stacked in refrigerated silver containers, the 78 tons of bananas hiding the cocaine were coming from Ecuador and being shipped to Armenia, said Italian officials. Custom officials inspecting shipments arriving from South America – many of which held exotic fruits – found the cocaine hidden in the containers in various ways, officials said. They found the drug amongst the fruits, hidden in false bottoms or in external hiding spots on the containers, officials said. 

The street value of the drug would have earned traffickers “an income of over 800 million euros,” officials said in the news release.

Collaboration between international drug syndicates and the drug syndicates in the European Union has grown due to what an analysis by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction called the “historically high availability“ of cocaine. The analysis noted that “high levels of cocaine production in South America have resulted in record quantities seized in Europe.”

Cocaine is the second most used drug in the European Union, just after marijuana, according to the analysis, which estimates the EU is a 10.5 billion market for cocaine.

Most of the drug trade in Italy, and much of Europe, is dominated by the ‘Ndrangheta crime group, a highly sophisticated global network dealing in international narcotics that operates in 40 countries.

Earlier this month police across Europe staged a vast, coordinated operation against the ‘Ndrangheta and took 132 people into custody in an effort to stem the flow of cocaine into the continent. 

Prosecutors said in addition to the mafia’s drug dealing operations, the organization dabbles in money laundering, extortion, trafficking of illegal waste and other criminal activities, using shell companies to invest illegal gains in the legitimate economy worldwide.

Chris Livesay contributed to this report.