AP – Australian police seized a record 2.3 tonnes of cocaine and arrested 13 people in raids after the suspects’ boat broke down off the coast of Queensland, authorities said yesterday.
The drugs had a sale value of AUD760 million (USD494 million) and equalled as many as AUD11.7 million street deals if they had reached the country of 28 million people, federal police said in a statement.
Investigators told reporters in Brisbane that the drugs were transported from an unidentified South American country.
The arrests on Saturday and Sunday followed a month-long investigation after a tipoff that the Comancheros motorcycle gang was planning a multi-tonne smuggling operation, Australian Federal Police Commander Stephen Jay said. The smugglers made two attempts to transport the drugs to Australia by sea from a mothership floating hundreds of kilometres offshore, Jay said.
Their first boat broke down, and the second vessel foundered on Saturday, leaving the suspects stranded at sea for several hours until police raided the fishing boat and seized the drugs, he said. The mothership was in international waters and was not apprehended, Jay said.
Authorities have seized more than one tonne of cocaine before, Jay said, but the weekend’s haul was the biggest ever recorded in Australia.
