Colombian Navy Seizes 1.8 Tons of Cocaine from Two Boats

“Socalj” for Borderland Beat

The Colombian National Navy announced that, in operations against drug trafficking on the Nariño coast, it managed to seize 1,788 kilograms of cocaine that four Colombians and a foreigner were moving aboard two flipper-type boats.

The cocaine shipment seized would belong to the Alfonso Cano Western Bloc of the extinct FARC dissidents, which would be under the command of alias Allende. According to estimates by the authorities, the shipment would exceed $60 million dollars in international illegal markets. The seizure was achieved thanks to a joint effort between units of the Navy and the Attorney General’s Office, which determined that the shipment of cocaine would be destined for Central America.

After consolidating the intelligence information of the Colombian Navy, added to that compiled in the investigative work of the CTI of the Prosecutor’s Office, Units of the Tumaco Coast Guard Station, they allowed the first boat named ‘Camila’ to be detected, when it was moving suspiciously, 25 nautical miles from the Nariño coast.

Due to the above, the Coast Guard began a maritime interdiction operation that after several minutes of persecution and in the midst of adverse weather conditions, managed to intercept the motorboat manned by two Colombians and one foreigner.

An hour after the first operation, another Coast Guard unit that was carrying out control and security operations in the area, managed to intercept a second boat named ‘Josue’, which was also moving suspiciously. When carrying out the verification protocols of the motor ships, the Navy reported in a statement that “the uniformed officers detected changes in the structure of both vessels, which allowed inferring the existence of a double bottom, a modality used by the armed groups organized for the illicit drug trafficking, with which they seek to pass unnoticed the shipments in front of the controls carried out by the authorities”.

The Navy warned that the boats were transferred to the Tumaco Coast Guard Station where, when inspected in coordination with officials from the CTI of the Attorney General’s Office, 1,788 pressed packages of cocaine were found. 1,680 gallons of fuel, communications, and geolocation equipment were also seized.

The five subjects found onboard these boats were placed at the disposal of the competent authorities, before whom they must answer for the alleged crime of drug trafficking, manufacture and/or possession, among others.

From the Navy, they specified that of the 101 tons of cocaine hydrochloride seized so far this year, more than 50 tons have been seized in the Pacific during 2022. It is worth remembering that on May 3, the Navy announced that eleven laboratories for the processing of coca base paste had been destroyed on the Pacific coast of the department of Nariño, in southern Colombia.

During the operations carried out jointly by the Navy and the National Army, it was also possible to destroy a total of 3,252 gallons of coca base paste in process, which would belong to the dissident groups of the FARC structures “Iván Ríos” and “Ariel Aldana”, who commit crimes in this southwestern part of the country. The eleven laboratories, supplies, and machinery found were destroyed in a controlled manner, according to established protocols and in coordination with the Attorney General’s Office.