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Slovenian police seize 100 kg of cocaine in shipment

Xinhua, April 14, 2016 Adjust font size:

Slovenian police have seized 100 kg of cocaine discovered by a company from NE Slovenia stashed in a shipment of raw material for grinding wheels, state media Slovenian Press Agency reported on Wednesday.

The capture came as one of the biggest drug smugglings in recent years in Slovenia when some employees of Swatycomet, the Slovenske Konjice-based maker of grinding wheels, stumbled on Monday upon five duffel bags hidden in an incoming container carrying corundum.

A closer examination of the extra cargo among the raw material for grinding wheels found that it contained 100 one-kg packets of white powder, which police subsequently confirmed was cocaine, the company said on Wednesday.

Police said the container had come from Brazil's Sao Paolo and passed through the port of Koper at the end of March. Upon arrival at the company its contents were inspected by warehouse supervisors.

The drugs were hidden in the shipment of 26 tonnes of the raw material packed in one-tonne packages. Five of the packages contained the duffel bags with the illicit contents, police said.

"The discovery of the white powder among the corundum is like finding a needle in the haystack, which is why we should be proud of our security mechanisms," the company said in a statement.

Chief criminal investigator in Celje Damijan Turk told a press conference on Wednesday that Swatycomet had ordered the corundum shipment from a company in Germany, which did business with a Brazilian company.

The raw material was shipped from Sao Paolo on March 8, said Turk, adding that police believe that Swatycomet's order had been abused by traffickers to hide their swag.

The company which eventually stumbled on the drugs is not linked to trafficking, said Turk. Instead the nature of the shipment and its route appears to have attracted the interest of traffickers looking to move their drugs to western Europe.

As part of their ongoing investigation into the bust, Slovenian police have linked up with partner agencies abroad.

Slovenian media outlets have estimated that the drugs cache has a street value up to 10 million euros (11.3 million U.S. dollars), while the police said that the shipment would fetch a wholesale price of around 4 million euros.

The biggest cocaine bust in Slovenia to date took place in 2014, when police discovered 175 kg of cocaine hidden in two trucks which had come from Italy. Enditem