US coastguard seizes 13 tons of cocaine
In the biggest cocaine seizure in US maritime history, the coastguard found 13 tons (11.9 tonnes) of the drug aboard a fishing boat that aroused suspicion because it had no working fishing equipment and few fish.
US Attorney Gregory Vega put the drug’s street value at about 500m (£350m).
Authorities discovered the cocaine on May 3 in a secret compartment on the Belize-flagged vessel after boarding it about 1,500 miles south of San Diego, California, federal prosecutors said yesterday.
Cocaine seizures in the eastern Pacific Ocean have become increasingly common in recent years as smugglers seek to evade law enforcement in the Caribbean by taking advantage of the vastness of the Pacific.
The 152ft ship caught the attention of a US Navy ship on April 28 because it lacked operable fishing equipment, had few fish, and was outside normal fishing grounds, coastguard Captain Bob Reininger said.
After searching the vessel for five days, a crew from a coastguard cutter found the cocaine under the hold.
The vessel was towed yesterday to San Diego.
The 10-man crew of the Svesda Maru - eight Ukrainians and two Russians - was arrested. They were to be arraigned on drug conspiracy charges and could get life in prison if convicted.
Investigators believe that the 11,879kg of cocaine came from Colombia and that the crew intended to deliver it to Central America or Mexico, where it would be smuggled by land into the United States.
The smugglers on the boat must have had permission from Mexico’s Arellano-Felix drug trafficking organisation to be transporting cocaine so close to its territory, said Errol Chavez, agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s San Diego office.
‘‘This is some indication that there is direct involvement or some kind of association between Russian organised crime and members of the Arellano-Felix organisation,’’ Chavez said.
The previous record for a cocaine seizure at sea was 10,800kg from a ship called the Nataly I in 1995.
Since October 1, the US Coast Guard has seized 49,500kg of cocaine at sea, 80% of it in the eastern Pacific.
