Maltese authorities seized 612kg of cocaine en route to Libya, in a record-breaking haul worth some 69 million euros, the Maltese Customs Department said on Thursday.
The cocaine was being shipped from Ecuador and Columbia, and was discovered hidden in a container on a ship at the Malta Freeport late on Wednesday.
Customs officials seized 510 packets weighing 1.2kg each in what it described as a record-breaking seizure from a single container.
Customs agents doubted the ship’s cargo after discrepancies in the scanning image were found. The goods on the pallets of one container appeared to be dense compared to others, which prompted them to unload and dismantle one of the pallets.
“During the whole of 2019 a total of 750kg were intercepted by Customs from 16 containers,” the statement said.