Cocaine stashed in coffee bean bags at the Nespresso factory. Photo: Fribourg cantonal police via AP
Half a tonne of cocaine has been found in a shipment of coffee beans sent to a Nespresso factory in Switzerland. Staff at the factory in Romont alerted the authorities when a mysterious white powder was discovered in a shipment tracked back to Brazil. Workers “found an undetermined white substance when they unloaded the freshly delivered sacks of coffee beans,” Fribourg Police said on Thursday.Police confirmed the substance found at the Nestlé coffee pod factory was cocaine after analysing a sample. Further investigation of five more shipping containers delivered on the same day resulted in a total seizure of 500kg of cocaine. Further investigations showed the cocaine was 80 percent pure, with an estimated street value of over 50 million Swiss francs (about £41 million).No cocaine is thought to have contaminated any of Nestlé’s coffee products in Switzerland. Earlier this year, a large shipment of coconuts filled with liquid cocaine was intercepted at a Colombian port en route to Italy, while some Latin American cartels have been known to line refrigerators with drugs to transport them across borders.
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