Spanish Authorities Search Boxship Baltic Summer for Drugs, Find Nothing

After a high seas boarding, Spain’s Guardia Civil brought the boxship Baltic Summer into port at Vigo to be searched for drugs – the latest in a series of busts at the quiet port of Vigo, just north of the Portuguese border. This time, however, the authorities came away empty-handed.

Baltic Summer was under way on a voyage from Puerto Bolivar, Ecuador when it was stopped by Spanish authorities and diverted to the harbor at Vigo, with assistance from the U.S. FBI and Homeland Security Investigations. It was not headed to Spain, nor elsewhere in the EU, but to St. Petersburg, Russia. The majority of the crew are Russian and Belarusian, according to Spanish authorities.

Baltic Summer was suspected to be carrying a consignment of drugs, and was thoroughly searched by the Guardia Civil’s Central Operative Unit. The examination turned up nothing, according to local media, and the crew and the vessel will be released to continue their onward journey.

Baltic Summer’s loading port, Puerto Bolivar, is the biggest export hub for bananas in Ecuador. High-volume consignments of bananas are a preferred vehicle for cocaine smugglers: South America’s banana-exporting regions are near to cocaine-producing areas, and banana boxes get shipped to the preferred destination – Europe, where drug prices are high. As the world’s most-shipped fruit, there are thousands of containers to sort through to find the “dirty” boxes amidst the far more numerous legitimate ones. At the destination port, customs officials face time pressure to release the containers fast because the fruit has a limited shelf life: it only lasts about one month from packing to unpacking before spoilage sets in, and less if precise temperature conditions aren’t maintained – leaving little time for detention and searching.

In November, Spanish police in Algeciras seized the country’s largest-ever single cocaine shipment. In a container of Ecuadorian bananas, they found 13 tonnes of the expensive drug, one of the largest busts on record anywhere.

Top image: Port of Vigo / Dantadd / CC BY SA 2.5