Spanish police have seized nearly 10 tonnes of cocaine in the largest maritime drug bust in the country's history. The haul was discovered hidden among a cargo of salt on a merchant ship off the Canary Islands.
The Policía Nacional said on Monday that officers from its elite special operations group boarded the vessel 332 miles (535km) off the Canary Islands last week. They recovered 294 bales of cocaine, weighing a total of 9,994kg, buried in the salt shipment. A firearm was also found.
Thirteen people were arrested, and the ship, which had run out of fuel, was towed to port in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. The operation, codenamed White Tide, was carried out in collaboration with Brazilian federal police, the US Drug Enforcement Administration, the UK's National Crime Agency, and French and Portuguese authorities.
The police statement described the seizure as a decisive blow to international criminal networks involved in maritime cocaine trafficking. The previous record for the largest cocaine seizure at sea by Spanish police was 7.5 tonnes in July 1999.
In 2024, Spanish authorities intercepted a total of 123 tonnes of cocaine, up from 118 tonnes in 2023 and 58 tonnes in 2022.
