The Colombian Navy intercepted a submarine loaded with cocaine in the Pacific Ocean that was on its way to Australia, the BBC reports today.
Smuggling cocaine from South America to Australia is a new smuggling route and is particularly lucrative, as a kilogram of the drug costs up to $240.000 (€227.000) there - six times more than in the US. Australians are the biggest per capita users of cocaine in the world, followed by the British.
Officials said the submarine was the third such vessel they had seized in that part of the Pacific Ocean, meaning drug cartels had established a new direct sea route to Australia.
The latest drug submarine was intercepted 1.900 kilometers southwest of Clipperton Island, an uninhabited French coral atoll in the Pacific Ocean.
The submarine, which is made of wood and fiberglass, is believed to have set sail from the Colombian port of Tumaco, traveling thousands of kilometers before it was stopped.
The Chief of Staff of the Colombian Navy, Vice Admiral Orlando Enrique Grisales, said that all three submarines they stopped were capable of sailing from Colombia to Australia without the need to refuel at sea.
The submarines were intercepted as part of the multinational maritime operation Orion, during which security forces from dozens of countries seized a total of 225 tons of cocaine over six weeks.
Orion also led to the arrest of more than 400 people in several countries.
Grisales said Orion has uncovered close ties between drug-trafficking cartels in South America and Oceania. "These are organized crime networks that are now united," he said.
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