More than five tons of cocaine were seized by the French navy aboard a semi-rigid boat in the Gulf of Guinea, the Atlantic maritime prefecture said in a press release on Tuesday.
“The instruments of international judicial cooperation immediately implemented by the Brest prosecutor's office allowed the referral to the anti-drug prosecutor's office in Madrid and the subsequent arrest of the four suspected drug traffickers by the Cape Verdean authorities,” the prefecture said.
The nationality of those arrested was not specified.
The seizure of 5,132 kilos of cocaine, “with an estimated market value in France of more than 330 million euros,” was carried out on Wednesday, December 6, aboard a “semi-rigid speedboat, around fifteen meters long,” according to the same source .
The narcotics were transferred to the French Navy's Patrouilleur de haute mer (PHM) to be “destroyed”.
The operation was carried out “on the basis of information” provided by the Maritime Analysis and Operations Center (Narcotics), based in Lisbon, and by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the American federal agency responsible for combating drug trafficking .
The French Navy almost permanently stations one or two ships, supported by a maritime patrol aircraft, in the Gulf of Guinea as part of an operation called “Corymbe”.