ST. PETERSBURG, May 3. /TASS/. Some 60 kilograms of cocaine has been found in a banana shipment in the Russian port of St. Petersburg, the Anti-Drug Commission said in a statement.

"Customs officers found 60 kg of cocaine when inspecting a container of fresh bananas, which had arrived from the Ecuadorian port of Puerto Bolivar. <...> A criminal investigation has been launched into major drug smuggling," the commission noted, adding that if convicted, the perpetrators could face 15 years to life in prison.

When inspecting a ship at the port, law enforcement officials discovered drugs packed in one-kg briquettes hidden in the upper part of a refrigerated container with bananas. An examination confirmed that all 60 briquettes contained cocaine. According to trade documents, the banana shipment was destined to a company from the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk.

In late February, officers from the Baltic Customs division uncovered 11 kilograms of cocaine hidden in banana boxes that had been delivered at the Great Port of St. Petersburg from the Belgian port of Antwerp. In late January, 1.2 metric tons of cocaine was found in a coffee shipment also from Antwerp. Ten kg more of cocaine was seized from a vessel from Nicaragua that same month.

Pavel Terentyev, first deputy chief of the North-West Operational Customs, said at a TASS-hosted press conference earlier that more drugs had been seized in the region in January than in all of 2023.