Around 800 kilograms of cocaine seized in Italy, with Serbian flags on many packages

The Italian Financial Police announced that they had seized more than 770 kilograms of extremely high-purity cocaine, found in 650 packages, at the port of Vado Ligure.

The drugs were hidden among dozens of pallets of bananas in a refrigerated container that arrived from one of the main ports in Ecuador, according to the Italian Financial Police website.

Police said the shipment of high-purity drugs was hidden among dozens of pallets of bananas in a refrigerated container that arrived from one of Ecuador's main ports. Many of the packages had a picture of the Serbian flag on them, Insajder.net reports. Police are investigating the origin of the shipment and are trying to find out who is behind the trafficking.

The operation was carried out by members of the Provincial Command of the Financial Police in Savona, with the support of the Economic and Financial Police Unit from Genoa and in collaboration with officers of the Anti-Fraud Department of the Customs and Monopolies Agency in Savona.

As stated in the statement, the seizure is the result of increased control and analysis of trade routes connecting South America with the port of Vado Ligure, which is an increasingly important hub for European trade, but also a point of attraction for smuggling groups.

Financial police said it was one of the largest cocaine seizures at the port in recent years. It is estimated that the drugs, if they had reached the illegal market, would have brought criminal organizations around 250 million euros.

It is also stated that the operation is part of the Italian authorities' ongoing activities to combat international drug trafficking.

Saša Đorđević from the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime tells Insider that packages of cocaine are often marked with different symbols, logos or national motifs in order to determine who they belong to or who they are intended for within a larger shipment.

"The Serbian flag on certain packages may be a mark or a kind of brand that indicates the supplier, owner or intended recipient of that part of the shipment. However, the Serbian flag itself is not proof that the cocaine was intended for the Serbian market, nor that a criminal group from Serbia is behind the cocaine smuggling," says Đorđević.