U.K. Police Make Record Cocaine Bust in Unexpected Place

Authorities around the world have made drug busts in some pretty wild places, finding priceless cargo where one would never think to look. Police in the U.K. just set a record for the biggest Class A drug bust by weight in the country’s history, seizing a total of 5.7 tons of cocaine estimated to be worth upwards of $570 million. The illicit packages weren’t being shipped on their own, though; they were discovered in cargo boxes filled with bananas. 

The National Crime Agency told the BBC that the drugs were en route to Hamburg in Germany. Authorities were called in to search the cargo in the port of Southampton before the ship set sail. They found dozens of boxes of unripe bananas with packs of cocaine buried among the fruit. 

“This is a massive financial hit for a crime group and that will seriously disrupt them,” the NCA’s drug threat lead told the BBC. “We’ve seen high levels of seizures across Europe [in recent years] but we are in a cocaine market where production continues to increase in South America.”

Related: Cocaine Worth $75K Found Near Mysterious Shipwreck

As for the packages’ final destination, the NCA’s director Chris Farrimond believed that the drugs would have ended up back in the U.K. anyway even if the cargo had made it safely to Germany. 

“While the destination for the consignment was continental Europe in this case, I have no doubt that a significant proportion would have ended up back here in the U.K., being peddled by U.K. criminal gangs,” he said. “Working closely with U.K. partners like Border Force, we are determined to do all we can to protect the U.K. public.”

It’s probably safe to say the precious cargo wasn’t a great source of potassium.