More than two tonnes of cocaine packed in bags washed up last weekend and Wednesday on the Channel coast, Agence France-Presse (AFP) learned on Thursday March 2 from a source familiar with the matter. 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 bags washed up on the coast, as announced by the Channel prefecture in a press release. This time, according to a source familiar with the matter, confirming information from Ouest France, it is 1.5 tons of cocaine, which brings the total of these catches to the “historic” level 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 (Calvados ), 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 the bundles are secured to the hull of the boat and not placed inside and can unhook depending on the state of the sea, added another source familiar with the matter.
Record seizure of 1.9 tonnes in Le Havre
Investigators must now try to trace the route of these bags. The maritime prefecture affirmed that “particular surveillance of the maritime approaches to the North Cotentin sector was maintained and ensured by air means”. “New overflights as well as maritime patrols are carried out,” she added. In the early afternoon, there “had been no new discoveries of narcotics,” the maritime prefecture said on Twitter on Thursday.
This is not the first time that cocaine has washed up on the French coast. Thus, at the end of 2019, bales containing a total of 1,600 kilograms of cocaine had 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 tons of drugs in 2022. For this volume: 27 tons of cocaine, an increase of 5%, of which 55% came from West Indies and Guyana.
“We must prevent this white tsunami from reaching our shores,” warned Gabriel Attal. The Minister of Public Accounts, on which customs depends, welcomed the “historic” seizure of cocaine made on February 19 by his services in the port of Le Havre, with 1.9 tonnes of powder intercepted in a few days.
