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Russia said Wednesday it had seized 1,800 pounds of cocaine hidden under a shipment of bananas, calling it its largest bust of drugs from Latin America this year.
Russia's customs service, working jointly with the FSB security service, said it had uncovered a batch worth "more than 12 billion rubles ($153 million)" stashed in banana containers.
The cocaine packages — disguised in briquettes bearing the label of a French luxury fashion brand — were discovered in a "hidden cavity" under the bananas, it added. In a , the Federal Customs Service of Russia released images of the cocaine and said service dogs helped sniff out the hidden drugs.
Customs officials said they carried out the bust after a tip-off from "foreign colleagues about the intention of a South American criminal group to organize a smuggling channel for cocaine supplies to Russia."
It said an investigation had been opened into large-scale drug trafficking, a charge that in Russia carries maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
Russia has a zero-tolerance policy toward drug use and smuggling, handing heavy sentences to those convicted of trafficking small amounts of narcotics — including foreigners.
Cocaine smuggling into Russia has surged over the past two years, according to Russia's Izvestia newspaper.
Drug traffickers are increasingly looking to the country as a transit hub, in part because the Ukrainian port of Odesa has become inaccessible due to the , the paper said.
Cocaine has been found hidden in banana shipments across the globe in recent months.
In May, employees at a Norwegian fruit distributor discovered a packet of cocaine in a box of bananas, alerting customs officials who found a .
Last December, authorities in the Dominican Republic confiscated from a banana shipment at the country's most important seaport.
In August 2024, customs agents seized more than at the port in Greece from a ship carrying the fruit. The month before that, police dogs in Ecuador helped find hidden in a banana shipment headed to Germany.
In March last year, Bulgarian customs officials confiscated about from a ship transporting bananas from Ecuador.
The month before that, British authorities said they found of cocaine hidden in a shipment of the fruit, breaking the record for the biggest single seizure of hard drugs in the country.
