An underwater scooter discovered at customs was the starting point for an extensive police operation and Norway’s largest cocaine seizure ever.
When a customs officer in the Norwegian city of Larvik stopped a driver with the advanced diving equipment, he sensed trouble and alerted the police.
Was tracked by helicopter and thermal camera
After searching for several days, the police were able to arrest six people and seize 150 kilos of cocaine. It had been shipped by cargo ship from Brazil and reached the harbor in the small town of Husnes on the night of April 13 last year.
Among other things, the suspected perpetrators’ rental cars were tracked and a hidden camera had been placed in their rental apartment.
With the help of a police helicopter and a thermal imaging camera, the police were able to follow the smugglers when they were to retrieve the cocaine from the ship. The police footage shows how the cocaine is loaded into the tailgate of the Swedish-registered car.
First disclosure of “parasite cocaine”
It was also then that the police decided to act.
– We were able to confirm our main hypothesis step by step. This was a team of people who had come to collect drugs, one of the officers who worked on the case told TV2 Norway.
The driver of the car was stopped by the police after only a few kilometers of travel and soon after two more people were arrested, a 46-year-old man who is suspected of swimming ashore with the cocaine, and a 33-year-old woman.
The seizure was not only the largest ever made in Norway. It was also the first time it was possible to uncover the smuggling of so-called “parasite cocaine”. The method means that the narcotics are attached below the ship’s waterline before it is launched – so that the crew then, completely unknowingly, transports it to port where it is taken care of with the help of divers.
A total of five people stand accused in the so-called Husnes case. The sixth person arrested died in custody last year.