Members of a Latin American drug cartel were caught red-handed while attempting to smuggle the drugs, the FSB has said
The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) has said its operatives have seized 570kg of cocaine and arrested two members of a Colombian drug cartel during a sting in Moscow Region.
The confiscated shipment is worth around 1.5 billion rubles ($15 million) on the wholesale black market, which translates to a street value of 5.5 billion rubles (around $48 million), the agency said in a statement on Friday.
The drugs were intended to be smuggled from Russia into the EU, the FSB added.
According to the agency, the seizure of the drugs was a result of a multi-stage operation, which started several years ago, after the FSB learned of plans by “a South American criminal group” to change its traditional direct routes for the delivery of cocaine to Western Europe, and rely on Russia’s transport infrastructure instead.
During that period, a thorough monitoring of economic transactions with Latin American countries was carried out. Extensive work was also conducted to identify the cartel’s connections in Russia, involving both local citizens and foreigners, it said.
The FSB said those activities allowed it to find out about a delivery of a “partially disassembled cargo vehicle” from Peru to Russia. It did not say what type of vehicle was used, but noted that it was in such a poor condition that repairing it could not have been financially viable. This led to suspicions that the vehicle was being used to smuggle drugs.
Surveillance of the cargo’s route resulted the identification of two foreign citizens, who arrived in Moscow posing as workers sent to dismantle the broken units of the vehicle, the statement read. Those individuals were already known to the Russian security services as members of the cartel, it said.
They were caught red-handed after removing numerous packages of cocaine from units of the vehicle at a warehouse in Moscow Region and putting them in a cache inside an EU-bound cargo container, according to FSB.
“The foreign drug dealers” were put in custody, and a criminal case has been launched against them, it said.
According to the agency, it is the fifth time this year that a major batch of cocaine has been confiscated in Russia. Last month, the FSB announced the seizure of one ton of drugs from a cargo truck near the border with Latvia.
