Police in Costa Rica have seized two tons of cocaine from a “low-profile” boat found some 80 nautical miles off the country’s coast.
Costa Rican law enforcement authorities, who described the massive shipment as one of the largest drug confiscations ever made at sea, said they began tracking the vessel in the Pacific Ocean after being handed a tip-off from the US Coast Guard on Wednesday.
Some 2,000 packets of cocaine, each weighing around 1kg, where found when authorities searched the four-motor boat known as a low-profile vehicle (LPV), a type of vessel that is commonly used by drug trafficking networks because they can be difficult to detect using radar.
Speaking before the operation took place last week, Costa Rican Security Minister Michael Soto revealed that cocaine estimated to be worth around $500 million has been seized across the Central American country so far this year.
Announcing that Costa Rican law enforcement agencies had intercepted more than 15 tons of cocaine since the beginning of the year, Soto is reported to have said: “It is important to highlight the joint work carried out by the different police bodies, among them the Judiciary Investigative Police (OIJ), the Direction of Intelligence and Security (DIS), the Frontier Police, Drug Control Police (PCD), Aerial Surveillance Service, National Coast Guard Service, and Public Police Force as well as the assistance of United States in joint patrolling.”
Soto also said police last week found 256kgs of cocaine concealed inside the wall of a container truck that was attempting to leave the country through its border with Nicaragua.
The truck, which had Guatemalan license plates, was transporting metal rubbish and other waste and was stopped at the Peñas Blancas border.
The driver of the vehicle, a 38-year-old Guatemalan national, was arrested and remains in custody.
Costa Rica’s location between South and North America makes it a popular smuggling route for cocaine cartels looking to traffic their product to the US.
Cocaine typically costs around $600 per kilo in the countries in which it is produced, according to Soto.
Once the drug reaches Costa Rica, the price rises to $6,000, before soaring as high as $35,000 per kilo once it arrives in the US.
In its assessment of drug trafficking in Cost Roca, the US State Department said: “Costa Rica ranks third highest in the Western Hemisphere for transshipment of cocaine.
“Once a problem mostly confined to fast boats operating miles off shore, the drug trade has morphed into a proliferation of illegal air tracks, warehousing operations, land smuggling networks, and tainted shipping container traffic.”
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