Eighty plastic packages containing cocaine with a total weight of more than 91 kg, worth approximately 4,000,000 euros, were located and seized inside a container with stacked bananas.

The container had been unloaded from a Liberian-flagged ship coming from Ecuador in the evening hours of Monday 11-13-23, with a legal cargo of bananas.

The control and detection of the narcotic substances was carried out at noon on Tuesday 11-14-2023 by a mixed team of executives of the Directorate of Prosecution of Drugs & Smuggling (DI.DI.NAL.) of the LS-EL.AKT Headquarters and the Regional Prosecution Team of Narcotics (P.O.D.I.N.) of the Central Port Authority of Piraeus, with the assistance of employees of the 3rd Customs of Piraeus-Smuggling Prosecution Department. During the same control, a GPS tracker was also seized.

This joint operation took place within the framework of inter-agency cooperation to combat drug trafficking and following the utilization of information from the Directorate of Prosecution of Drugs & Smuggling.

Then, from 11-19-23 to 11-22-23, a further investigation was carried out in the port of Thessaloniki by officials of the National Drug Enforcement Agency, the Regional Drug Prosecution Teams (D.D.I.N.) of of the Central Port Authority of Thessaloniki & Piraeus and of the First Customs of Thessaloniki, in an additional sixteen containers connected to the original one, with negative results.

K-9 teams and self-propelled X-Ray vehicles of the above Authorities, as well as the Central Port Authority of Kavala, participated in these multi-day investigations.

A preliminary investigation is being carried out by the Central Port Authority of Piraeus, while a sample of the seized amount of narcotic substance was taken by a team of the State General Chemistry for examination.