Cocaine worth $330m seized by Ecuador police in banana shipments

Police in Ecuador has seized nearly 8.8 tonnes of cocaine in a cargo of bananas bound for Belgium.

Police chief Fausto Salinas said the narcotics would have been worth an assessed $330m (£275m) had they reached their destination.

Ecuador has become one of the significant transit nations for cocaine produced in neighbouring Peru and Colombia.

Cocaine worth millions found in Ecuador: 

Last year, almost 200 tonnes of the anaesthetic were found in the Andean nation, much of it in the port of Guayaquil.

With Ecuador, the world’s biggest exporter of bananas, mules often try to hide their illicit consignments among the fruit shipped from Guayaquil to destinations worldwide.

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This latest haul was hidden inside a container full of banana cases bound for Belgium.

The seizure overlaps with a trip by Belgium’s Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden and European Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson to Ecuador and Colombia.

The two officials want to boost cooperation with the two South American countries in the war against drug trafficking.

Belgium has become the land where the most significant amounts of cocaine have been found within the European Union in recent years. The port of Antwerp is the primary entry point for illicit drugs.