More than two tons of cocaine packed in bags washed ashore, last weekend and Wednesday 1er March, on the coast of the Channel, learned, Thursday, March 2, the Agence France-Presse (AFP) from a source close to the file. The retail market value of the recovered lots is estimated at nearly 150 million euros.
Sunday morning, on the beach of Réville (Manche), several bags containing approximately 850 kilograms of cocaine had been discovered. On Wednesday, new bales washed up on the coast, as announced by the prefecture of La Manche in a press release. This time, according to a source familiar with the matter, confirming a log information West Franceit is 1.5 tons of cocaine, which brings the total of these catches to the level “historical” of 2.3 tons.
On Wednesday, the maritime prefecture of the Channel and the North Sea recalled that an investigation had been opened at the beginning of the week by the prosecutor’s office of Cherbourg, the follow-up of the investigation being entrusted to the research section of Caen, the maritime gendarmerie and Ofast, the office dedicated to the fight against drug trafficking.
The provenance of the hermetically sealed bundles that washed up on the Cotentin coast has not been established. They may have been deliberately thrown into the sea to avoid control or fell off a ship on their own, said a source familiar with the matter. Sometimes they are attached to the hull of the boat and not placed on board and can come off depending on the state of the sea, added another source familiar with the matter.
Record seizure of 1.9 tons in Le Havre
Investigators must now try to trace the route of these bags. The maritime prefecture affirmed that a “Special surveillance of the approaches to the North Cotentin sector was maintained and ensured by air means”. “New overflights as well as patrols are carried out”, she added. In the early afternoon, he “there had been no new discoveries of narcotics”she said on Thursday, on Twitter.
This is not the first time that cocaine has washed up on the French coast. At the end of 2019, bales containing a total of 1,600 kilograms of cocaine washed up on the beaches of an area ranging from Saint-Jean-de-Luz (Pyrénées-Atlantiques) to Camaret-sur-Mer (Finistère). More recently, at the end of May 2022, breads of cocaine, for a total of around 21 kilograms, were found on a beach in Berck (Pas-de-Calais).
The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, announced on Tuesday the seizure by the French authorities of 156.7 tonnes of drugs in 2022. This total included 27 tonnes of cocaine (an increase of 5% over one year), including 55% came from the West Indies and Guyana.
“We must prevent this white tsunami from reaching our shores”, had alerted Gabriel Attal; the Minister of Public Accounts, on which customs depends, was pleased with the seizure “historical” of cocaine which had been carried out on February 19 by its services in the port of Le Havre (Seine-Maritime), with 1.9 tonnes of powder intercepted in a few days.