Peru anti-drug police seized 68 kilograms of high-purity cocaine, stashed in 500 bags of a coffee shipment due to be exported from the port of Paita, reported daily El Comercio on Friday.
The police had followed the cocaine trail north from Lima, and made the intervention when the shipment was about to be loaded onto a Maersk container ship at Paita – Peru’s fifth largest port.
The cocaine had to be filtered from the coffee beans in a process that took several days before police could prove their case, reported police, who believe the cocaine and coffee were mixed in the coastal city of Chiclayo, in a sophisticated clandestine drug lab. Pending further invetigations, only one employee of the coffee exporting company was under arrest.
The drug traffickers – who are coming up with ever more ingenious ways to conceal drugs – had made coffee bean-shaped moulds and tinted the drugs brown.
In February, police seized 58 kilograms of cocaine tightly packed between the internal metallic walls of a commercial airline food cart filled with ham and cheese sandwiches.
And, last September, Peruvian drug enforcement police seized two and a half tons of high purity cocaine paste hidden in shock absorbers used as fenders for ships. More than 20 people allegedly tied to Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel were arrested. Just a week prior, the same cartel lost out on more than 700 kilos of cocaine paste worth approximately $24 million. The paste had been mixed with 8 tons of paprika, one of Peru’s major exports.
