7.6 tonnes in the sugar

Unrefined cane sugar, panela, is sold in brown blocks all over Colombia. Ground to powder and mixed with cocaine, it was meant to slip through the scanners of the port of Cartagena. The anti-narcotics directorate of the national police opened the container: 7.6 tonnes, announced President Abelardo de la Espriella, more than 42 billion pesos taken from the traffickers and “more than 19 million doses” that will never reach the street.

According to TF1 Info, the shipment was bound for the Netherlands, Europe’s gateway for cocaine through Rotterdam. The Colombian media, for their part, give no destination. The president, elected in August and in office for two months, calls it “the biggest seizure recorded in this port terminal in ten years” and promises to hit the cartels “where it hurts most, in their structures and in their finances”.

« We will find them and hit them where it hurts most, in their structures and in their finances »Abelardo de la Espriella, president of Colombia, quoted by RCN

A record that comes at a handy moment

Under TF1’s reel, Colombians are sneering: the week befor, official figures showed seizures at their lowest in six years. A record haul comes at a handy moment for a president elected on toughness, in the world’s biggest producing country.

In Cartagena, the cranes are moving again. How many containers of panela went through before this one?