(Bloomberg) -- Spanish police retrieved three metric tons of cocaine from a drug-trafficking submarine captured off the country’s north-western coast.
Officers recovered 152 bundles of the drug from the vessel which was sunk by its crew as its police tracked its arrival off the Galician coast on Nov. 23, the Budget Ministry said in a statement Wednesday.
“It’s the first ‘narcosubmarine’ detected on the European continent,” the ministry said, describing its design as “handmade.”
Police arrested two Ecuadorian men who had come ashore during bad weather on a beach after failing to move the cargo of cocaine onto another vessel. A third man escaped and his whereabouts are unknown.
Customs agents and police are still trying to identify where the submarine came from. The operation was carried out with cooperation from police in the U.K., Portugal, U.S. and Brazil, the ministry said. The submarine, made out of fiber, has been taken to the port of Aldan where the drugs were removed.
©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
RECOMMENDED FOR YOU
POPULAR