Germany seizes 1.5 tons of cocaine, 2nd big haul in weeks

BERLIN – Customs officials in Hamburg have found 1.5 tons (1.65 U.S. tons) of cocaine on a container ship that arrived from Brazil, soon after Germany’s biggest-ever single seizure of the drug.

The port city’s customs office said Wednesday the new shipment was found last week in a container of tobacco cartons loaded onto the ship in Rio Grande, Brazil and headed for Antwerp, Belgium. The 1,575 packets of cocaine were hidden in 64 sport bags.

The office estimated the haul’s street value at about 350 million euros ($392 million).

On Friday, the Hamburg customs office announced that it had seized 4.5 tons (nearly 5 U.S. tons) of cocaine last month in a container shipped from Uruguay, with an estimated street value of nearly 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion).