Drugs valued at nearly 180 million zloty (€40 million) were discovered by law enforcement under the floorboards of a ship in the port of Gdynia. Units from the Border Guard, Central Bureau of Investigation, and the National Revenue Administration participated in the drug bust.
Polish Minister of Justice Zbigniew Ziobro announced the success of the Polish officers on social media, stating that due to the actions of Polish services “almost half a ton of cocaine will not hit the streets of Polish cities.”
Ziobro added that the shipment arrived in Poland from Bolivia via Chile.
“The dealer has already been arrested. He faces up to 15 years in prison. Prosecutors are on the trail of the remaining gang members,” the minister wrote on X.
The cocaine in the containers loaded with timber was located thanks to an examination, which revealed an anomaly within the scanned cargo. Sniffer dogs, trained in drug detection, also participated in the operation. Both sources confirmed that it was reasonable to search containers arriving from South America.
The revelation of such a large drug shipment to Poland is another success for the Maritime Division of the Border Guard in detecting drug smuggling. Three years ago, they seized about 3 tons of a substance containing cocaine with a black-market value of over 3 billion złoty (€670 million). The drugs had been shipped from Ecuador via Hamburg to Poland and were hidden in barrels of frozen pineapple pulp.
In 2016, police also intercepted a ship and discovered 3,300 kilograms of hashish, with an estimated value of 170 million zloty (€38 million). That drug seizure would also not have been possible without the work of officers from the Maritime Division of the Polish Border Guard.
