Australian police intercept cocaine shipment worth almost €500 million

Australian police intercepted a cocaine shipment of nearly three metric tonnes, described by officials as the country’s largest ever, with an estimated street value just under €500 million. Police said they found 2.7 metric tonnes of cocaine on a property on the outskirts of Sydney after the discovery on 19 June, using plastic tubs buried in underground bunkers concealed beneath three shipping containers on a semi-rural site in Londonderry. The containers had false floors providing access to the drugs, estimated at 816 million Australian dollars (about €499 million). Two Sydney residents, men aged 21 and 25, were arrested and charged with possessing a commercial quantity of an illicit drug, facing potential life sentences. Police allege a Sydney organized crime group transported the cocaine by road to the city after it arrived by boat at Midge Point in Queensland’s tropics, about 1,800 kilometers away. Officials suspect the same mother ship linked to a prior 178-kilogram cocaine seizure and identified MV Wealth as a suspect vessel seized in the Solomon Islands.