Portugal: Customs seize 100kg cocaine on container ship at Sines port

The Tax and Customs Authority (TA) announced Monday that it has seized more than 100 kilograms of cocaine at the Port of Sines during a control operation on a container coming from South America.

In a statement, TA states that the drug was stowed inside four sports bags hidden among the legitimate cargo of a container and that it was detected during “a non-intrusive control of a container” that had been selected “under local risk analysis criteria”.

The seized cocaine would have a market value of about four million euros and was handed over to the Judiciary Police.

“The narcotic was packed in a container from South America carrying legitimate cargo, and was misused for that purpose, waiting for the right moment to be removed from it and illegally introduced into the European Union,” adds TA, which warns that this seizure takes place within the framework of the powers of control and surveillance of the EU’s external border that are assigned to it and that are exercised in “any circumstance 24 hours a day,” that is, even in the current context of a state of emergency.

TA points out that the technique used by drug traffickers has been used in other international ports, which, “due to its characteristics, is difficult to detect, as it is specially designed to evade the usual risk analysis and assessment techniques used by the various customs authorities worldwide”.