By Mark Dovich
The National Security Service said Wednesday it had seized a record one-ton shipment of cocaine, estimated to value about $270 million.
According to the NSS, the cocaine was sent in banana crates from Ecuador through Panama, Italy, and Georgia before being seized Saturday. The agency said the shipment was ordered by an unnamed “company operating in Armenia and engaged in the import of fruits from a company located in Ecuador.” An NSS statement failed to mention if any arrests have been made in connection with the case.
It remains unclear why the agency waited for four days to report the seizure. It is also not publicly known if Armenian law enforcement believes Armenia, a country of fewer than 3 million people, was the final destination for the drugs or a planned transit country. The NSS declined to comment further on the matter when contacted by Radio Azatutyun, RFE/RL’s Armenian service.
The announcement of Armenia’s largest-ever cocaine bust came just one day after Italian law enforcement bodies said they intercepted more than 2.7 tons of “extremely pure” cocaine destined for Armenia. In a striking parallel, the Italian authorities said the shipment also originated in Ecuador, was sent in banana crates, and would have transited through Georgia.
The haul, worth an estimated $865 million, was confiscated in Calabria, the southern Italian region where the powerful ‘Ndrangheta organized crime group is based. It is not publicly known if the crime syndicate, which controls the lion’s share of Europe’s cocaine supply, is linked to the case.
The Prosecutor General’s Office told Radio Azatutyun it was also looking into the Italian police report, declining to comment further.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan told lawmakers earlier this month his administration is working to develop “more effective tools” to combat the illegal drug trade, acknowledging that “drug trafficking and the number of users has increased and is increasing” in Armenia. Official figures show that reported cases involving the trafficking or sale of illegal drugs increased sharply last year.
Earlier this week, the Investigative Committee and Federal Bureau of Investigation signed a memorandum of understanding to coordinate efforts to fight transnational crime.
Meanwhile, James Applegate, a senior anti-narcotics official at the State Department, held separate meetings this week with Interior Minister Vahe Ghazaryan and Prosecutor General Anna Vardapetyan to review cooperation in law enforcement, money laundering, and drug trafficking.
Ecuador is not known as a major producer or refiner of cocaine, but has emerged in recent years as a major dispatch point for the drug. InSight Crime, a Washington-based think tank and media organization specializing in organized crime, has called the country “one of the world’s cocaine superhighways.”
