Italian authorities have seized 5.3 tons of cocaine with EUR 850 million ($946 million) transported between ships off the coast of Sicily Friday (July 21).
Five people - two Tunisians, an Italian, an Albanian and a French national - were also arrested during the boarding, the Guardia di Finanza said in a statement.
Police alleged they have been tracking a ship that sailed from South America and found its way into the Mediterranean last Wednesday (July 19). Surveillance aircraft spotted packages being thrown from its deck into the waters of the Strait of Sicily to be collected by a waiting fishing trawler, whose course towards the packages were deemed "suspicious" by authorities.
Authorities quickly stopped the trawler and found large quantities of drugs in a hidden compartment behind some paneling on the vessel, as per a Reuters report.
Sicilian governor Renato Schifani commended the operation as a blow against drug smuggling. "Drugs are a scourge of our society fuelled by unscrupulous men who sow death by crushing hopes and destroying many families," he said in a statement.
A similar bust in April yielded almost 2 tons of cocaine floating at sea off of eastern Sicily, which police believed had been left by a cargo ship for collection.
