More than 400 pounds of cocaine was discovered by Spanish police in the core of hollowed out pineapples found in containers shipped from Central America to a large seaport. It wasn't the first time drug smugglers picked pineapples to hide their coke.
According to Agence France-Presse, the pineapples containing 440 pounds of cocaine arrived from an undisclosed Central America country addressed to two Spanish companies – one in Madrid and the other in Sant Quirze del Valles, near Barcelona. The news agency said Colombian-born Spanish nationals ran both businesses.
Authorities told AFP the drug-stuffed fruit was located in 10 shipping containers in the southern port of Algeciras, one of Europe's largest ports.
"Among the thousands of fresh pineapples inside the containers, they found fruit that had been hollowed out and stuffed with drugs and then covered with a yellow wax that simulated the color of pineapple pulp," Spanish interior ministries authorities said in a statement.
A year ago, 2.5 tons of cocaine hidden in 2,296 packages scattered among pineapples were found in a shipment that originated in Costa Rica,
according to The Telegraph. The container also landed in Algeciras and was then tracked to a warehouse near Madrid.
"This is one of the biggest seizures carried out in European Union ports," a police statement said at the time, noted The Telegraph. Six people were arrested in the Madrid suburb of Valdemoro for storing the cocaine in a warehouse.
Spain's close ties with Central America have made the European country a target for cocaine imports and criminals have become more creative in getting the drugs there. Authorities told The Telegraph that cocaine has been found inside breast implants, wigs, a plaster cast encasing a man's broken leg and a 42-piece crockery set.
In 2013, the
Huffington Post reported that Russian customs officials found 265 pounds of cocaine in banana boxes that arrived at its seaport in Kaliningrad. The 110 cocaine bricks in five boxes of bananas was the third such capture from banana crates from Ecuador.
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