The Bavarian police destroyed around 1.5 tons of cocaine of the highest purity with a sales value of around 270 million euros – more than ever before in the history of the authority. Under strict security precautions, the seized drug was burned, as the State Criminal Police Office announced on Wednesday.
The “Operation Snow Melt” took place on Tuesday at a secret location in Upper Bavaria. What is destroyed at around 1000 degrees, the police had secured in the past few years in various actions. Because the cocaine comes from several seizures in recent years. In 2017, employees in ten Bavarian supermarkets discovered almost 200 kilograms of the drug in banana boxes at almost the same time. In the course of an investigation, officials ultimately confiscated around 1.4 tons of cocaine.
At the end of 2019, an employee of a fruit wholesaler also found suspicious parcels in banana boxes. In the end, the police in Neu-Ulm seized almost half a ton. Some of the cocaine has already been destroyed in other federal states. Most of them were stored in a secret location in Bavaria and have now been burned. Dozens of suspects were arrested in connection with the investigation, some of them sentenced to long prison terms.