Last week, authorities in the Dominican Republic announced the nation's largest cocaine bust in history. It is the latest in a series of busts that appear to show a revival of Caribbean island routes to the major markets in Europe, where cocaine commands a high price and high sales volume.
Dominican drug agency DNCD captured 9.8 tonnes of cocaine in a containerized consignment of Guatemalan bananas at Caucedo, a port complex in Santo Domingo. The smuggling attempt was detected when a police unit spotted two open containers in the terminal, one empty and the other loaded with bananas. (The haul was initially reported as 9,587 kilo bricks totaling 9.5 tonnes, but a more precise audit determined that the total weight came to 9.8 tonnes.) The previous record was just 2.6 tonnes, a fraction of the recent seizure.
The ultimate destination for the shipment was in Belgium, home to Europe's primary cocaine import gateway and one of the EU's fastest growing consumption markets.
Dominican officials have detained 10 people in connection with the bust. The Dominican Public Prosecutor's Office and the DNCD are still questioning several persons of interest linked to the port, DNCD said Sunday, and more developments in the case are expected soon. There were "many unknown individuals who tried to transfer the drugs to another container that would be shipped on a vessel to Belgium," DNCD spokesman Carlos Denvers explained to BBC.
Dominican police valued the shipment at $250 million. If delivered to Europe, the consignment would be worth about $330 million wholesale; if shipped to the Pacific and delivered to Australia, it would be worth about $1 billion, and twice that amount at retail. Instead, it will be incinerated in an official ceremony at the headquarters of the Dominican Army.
Cocaine is fueling a rise in drug-related mortality in England, where cocaine-driven deaths have risen tenfold in a decade. Last year saw drug deaths hit the highest levels on record in the UK, caused in no small part by opiates.
