A pair of submarines that officials think were utilized to move cocaine was discovered and subsequently taken by agents this past week in South America and Europe.
The Colombian Navy stated in a recent release from earlier this week that it interdicted a semi-submersible sporting a length of roughly 50 feet out in the Pacific Ocean which contained close to 3 tons of cocaine, which was valued by officials at about $87 million. The street value of that cocaine ends up spiking into the hundreds of millions of dollars as soon as it makes its way out into the streets of the U.S.
Members of the Colombian military discovered a pair of individuals onboard the boat who was reportedly dealing with some sort of horrible health conditions due to an accident that took place onboard involving some kind of toxic gas. An additional two people were discovered on the craft but were already dead
Al interior de la embarcación, fueron hallados dos sujetos en malas condiciones de salud, y dos cuerpos sin vida, al parecer por la inhalación de gases tóxicos. Esta operación evitó el ingreso de más de 87 millones de dólares a estructuras de organizaciones narcotraficantes. pic.twitter.com/RFfYIvoMu3
— Armada de Colombia (@ArmadaColombia) March 12, 2023
This past Tuesday, the Civil Guard of Spain was able to take possession of the submarine just off the coast of the northwestern region of Galicia. The vessel was first seen this past Monday and local officials expressed that it most likely carried cocaine.
The boat, which is roughly the same size as the one discovered by Colombia’s Navy out in the Pacific, was entirely empty when the military officials took control of it at the bottom of the ocean floor.
Spanish authorities were able to seize back in 2019 a vessel that was quite similar, and that one contained well over three tons of cocaine.
Finalmente el sumergible hallado en la zona de Vilagarcía de Aurosa (Pontevedra) es traslado al puerto de Xufre.#GEAS: Grupo Especial de Actividades Subacuáticas de la @guardiacivil pic.twitter.com/sgBIcCtt6n
— Guardia Civil (@guardiacivil) March 14, 2023
The majority of the cocaine supply for the world comes out of three distinct countries located in northern South America: Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia.
Colombia is known to produce, by far, the most cocaine out of the three countries, with one estimate from 2017 stating that there were close to 460,000 acres in the country that were growing coca plants, a total which is much higher than when notorious drug kingpin Pablo Escobar ran the Medellin Cartel, as reported by a story out of The Washington Post.
The amount of cocaine bring made in Colombia is at such a high level that “unpicked coca leaves are rotting in the fields,” the report indicated.
“We’ve never seen anything like it before,” stated Luis Carlos Villegas, the defense minister of Colombia.
These drug cartels are known to build both submarines and semi-submersible craft mostly in the mangrove swamps around Colombia. It can cost roughly $1.2 million to build each of these vessels, which is then often utilized only a single time but the crew to smuggle hundreds of millions of dollars worth of cocaine to a destination, after which the craft is abandoned.
