21st July, 2012
Argentine authorities have discovered more than half ton of cocaine concealed in a dredger being shipped to Nigeria.
Dogs trained by AFIP, Argentine tax agency found the drugs, weighing 536 kg with a street value of $25 million, at the Ezeiza International Airport, south of Argentina, the AFP reported.
Argentina is a favored transit point for Andean hard drugs.
The cocaine had been tightly packed in 490 brightly coloured bricks and crammed into a heavy dredging equipment scheduled to be flown to an oil company in Lagos but it was discovered by two sniffer dogs — Tota and Gala.
The machinery was opened by officers and it was found to contain 536kg of pure cocaine inside thick walls of lead and steel.
Maria Siomara Ayeran, the director-general of the agency, said the name of the Nigerian company used is fake, as it could not be traced.
However, she disclosed that it was the first time the Argentine government would confiscate such hefty shipment of cocaine ready to be smuggled by air from Buenos Aires to Nigeria.
Ayeran added that investigators had identified the suspects and that the case was immediately handed over to a judge.