Argentina: More than 1.6 tons of cocaine bound for Dubai were seized

More than 1.6 tons of cocaine bound for Dubai, hidden in sacks of animal feed, were seized yesterday Friday in the city of Rosario, confirming once again that Argentina’s ports are becoming increasingly important in international drug trafficking , the authorities announced.

Ten people, all Argentine citizens, were arrested and detained as part of the police operation that took place overnight from Thursday to Friday at various locations, including warehouses in Rosario (310 km from Buenos Aires), the country’s third largest city of Latin America, where the main export port of the agri-food sector in the Atlantic is located.

“The 1,658 kilograms of cocaine had a commercial value of approximately $60 million,” Commissioner Mariano Jufra, head of the federal police’s drug enforcement agency, told the press. Firearms, large displacement cars and liquid were also seized.

The drugs were hidden in sacks of corn, intended to be used as cattle feed, and were to be loaded into a 150-tonne container of grain to be transported to Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Cocaine probably “originated in Colombia”, the country that produces the largest amount of this drug in the world. About 50 kilograms of this cargo was destined for the local market, according to police.

Rosario (1.5 million inhabitants) is considered a critical hub for drug trafficking in Argentina. It’s also the urban center with the worst violent crime problem, recording a homicide rate of 13 per 100,000 residents — in other words, three times the national average.

Specialists and judicial specialists in the fight against drugs recently emphasize that although cocaine comes mainly from the Colombia-Peru-Bolivia triangle, Argentina is becoming increasingly important for international smuggling because of its ports, the quality of its chemical components (for drug production) and the money laundering possibilities that exist.