MOSCOW, December 6. /TASS/. Russian border control and customs officers have seized 570 kilograms of EU-bound cocaine, worth over 1.5 billion rubles ($14.8 million) on the Russian black market, smuggled from Peru in a joint operation, the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the Federal Customs Service (FCS) reported.
The cocaine shipment was uncovered in a partially dismantled truck. Members of the Colombian Cali drug cartel were detained, the FSB added.
The multi-stage operation to intercept cocaine smugglers has lasted years since the Russian special services learned about the South American crime ring’s intentions to divert direct smuggling routes by using Russian transportation facilities.
For this purpose, constant monitoring of foreign economic ties with Latin American countries was established. Much work has been conducted to expose criminal links between the drug cartel and both foreigners and Russian nationals in Russia.
"Two foreign citizens who arrived in Moscow under an alleged pretext of dismantling non-functioning components of a truck, known to special services as members of a transborder drug cartel, have been identified. They were caught in a warehouse in the Moscow Region taking packages of cocaine out of one of the components and reloading them into another cache in a cargo container bound for the European Union as part of a legal shipment," the FSB and the FCS said.
This is the fifth shipment of Latin American cocaine, destined for EU countries, that has been seized by Russia’s security agencies this year, according to the FSB.