Instead of cacao beans, officials found more than 400 packets wrapped in black foil, each containing about 20 blocks of compressed cocaine.
Authorities in Germany said on Wednesday they had seized more than eight metric tonnes of cocaine from a container that was supposed to be carrying cacao beans and two suspects were later arrested in Spain.
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German customs investigators put the street value of the cocaine seized in the North Sea port of Wilhelmshaven at about €500 million.
The drugs were seized on 9 February and the subsequent arrests were made in El Ejido, in the Spanish province of Almería, on 14 May.
The container had arrived from West Africa and was destined for Spain, investigators said in a statement.
Instead of cacao beans, officials found more than 400 packets wrapped in black foil, each containing about 20 blocks of compressed cocaine.
The shipment was destroyed in Germany before the container was sent on its way to Barcelona.
Investigators identified two suspected organisers of the shipment and arrested them during a handover of the container.
One of them, the manager of an import company, has been linked to a previous cocaine shipment by Spanish customs, the statement said.
The pair could face prison sentences in Spain if tried and convicted.
'Today, drugs are everywhere'
At the end of December last year, the outgoing head of the European Union Drugs Agency (EUDA) warned that "Today, drugs are everywhere."
"Everything can be used or be the object of addictive behaviour. And as a consequence, everybody can face personally or indirectly someone who has a problem of acute or chronic addiction", Alexis Goosdeel said.
In 2023, for the seventh consecutive year, EU Member States reported a record amount of cocaine seized, amounting to 419 tonnes.
In its annual report last year, the EUDA said that in 2024, Spain reported its largest ever cocaine seizure in a single shipment: 13 tonnes, hidden in bananas from Ecuador.
Germany seized 43 tonnes of cocaine in 2023, including 25 tonnes in the port of Hamburg, double the amount reported in 2022.
New substances have also begun to appear in Europe, products that target a wide range of consumers, from occasional and socially integrated users to those with problematic consumption patterns and suffering from social marginalisation.