Police seize record cocaine haul in banana shipment in Spain; woman arrested and 2 suspects at large

Spanish police said Wednesday that they had seized 13 tons of cocaine — the country’s largest-ever haul of the drug — and made one arrest.

Police and customs agents intercepted the cocaine in the southern port of Algeciras on October 14 from a container ship that had arrived from Ecuador’s largest city Guayaquil, a drug-trafficking hub.

The ship carried crates of bananas that concealed identically designed boxes containing the cocaine, and intelligence from Ecuadoran police tipped off the Spanish authorities, national police said in a news release.

A woman believed to be a partner of the importing company was arrested in the central Spanish city of Toledo and two other suspects are on the run, police said.

Spain is a main entry point for drugs into Europe because of its close ties with former colonies in Latin America and its proximity to Morocco, a top cannabis producer.

Massive hauls of drugs have been hidden in banana shipments throughout Europe before. In February, British authorities said they had found more than 12,500 pounds of cocaine hidden in a shipment of bananas, shattering the record for the biggest single seizure of hard drugs in the country. Last August, customs agents in the Netherlands seized 17,600 pounds of cocaine found hidden inside crates of bananas in Rotterdam’s port. Three months before that, a police dog sniffed out 3 tons of cocaine stashed in a case of bananas in the Italian port of Gioia Tauro.