French authorities have released images of cocaine seized from a fishing vessel intercepted while attempting to transport the drugs from Latin America to Europe, after the ship was towed to a pier at the port of the French Caribbean island of Martinique.
The French navy boarded the vessel, Uranya A, in a pre-dawn operation on Sunday, uncovering what authorities described as a major drug shipment.
The ship’s five-member crew was arrested, along with the vessel’s owner – dubbed the “Greek Escobar” by media – and a close associate detained in Greece.
After completing an inventory, French investigators said they found 136 sacks containing about four metric tons of cocaine.
The fishing boat had departed around six weeks earlier with a crew of four Greeks and one Bulgarian, authorities said. The drugs are believed to have been loaded at sea, and the vessel had been under surveillance for about a year.
Investigators believe part of the shipment was intended to be offloaded in Spain or Portugal, with the remainder destined for Greece.