Historical drug bust in Colombia: 12+ TONS of cocaine seized, street value of $360 million

[EmperorScorpious]

[quote]Police have seized more than 12 tonnes of cocaine from Colombia’s top crime gang, the biggest haul ever in the nation’s long-running fight against drug trafficking, President Juan Manuel Santos said.

The cocaine was found stored underground on four farms in a banana-growing region of north-west Antioquia province, near Colombia’s border with Panama.

The US market value was estimated by Santos at about of $360m. The haul would break down into 11m hits of one gram each which would equate to $660m at an average street price of around $60 per gram.

“Thanks to a police operation with overseas intelligence, from friendly countries, the largest seizure in history was made,” Santos said at a police base where the cocaine was laid out in packages on display.[/quote]

[url]https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/09/colombia-seizes-12-tonnes-of-cocaine-in-its-biggest-ever-drugs-bust[/url]

:wow:

[Viva_]

I read earlier, i think about 2 weeks ago of some massive operation Colombia was engaging in to coerce farmers to grow practically anything but coca. As well as severe cracking down on tidying up their reputation for exporting coke.

Looks like they're dead set serious already turning out results like this so swiftly.

[kharkovus]

12 tons of coke sold for 100 a g (the street price here, and that's just for shitty ass coke not stuff literally from colombia) would be worth a billion dollars.

Course, the actual price it would've sold for bulk is probably much less than a third of that -- shit gets more cut and more expensive the more loops it goes through, and street price is the last loop. A kilo of coke paste (2.2 lb) from the colombian farmer source is like 900-1000 bucks. At that price, 12 tons only comes out to be about 9 million dollars made.

9 million vs 1 billion. Orders of magnitude differentials in price expansion. Millions of dollars made by farmers converts to billions of dollars for the rest. Crazy shit. Makes sense that people go to such insane length to sell this stuff -- it's probably the only way out of poverty for much of the area.

[Unkle Dada]

More money for the police, slight setback for the cartel. Nothing changes and the world keeps spinning.

[Fate]

[QUOTE=UnknownDude;52872094]More money for the police, slight setback for the cartel. Nothing changes and the world keeps spinning.[/QUOTE]

Yeah this is 12 tonnes out of 900/year coming out of Colombia only.
Nothing more than a minor setback.

[editline]9th November 2017[/editline]

[QUOTE=kharkovus;52871991]12 tons of coke sold for 100 a g (the street price here, and that's just for shitty ass coke not stuff literally from colombia) would be worth a billion dollars.
[/QUOTE]

Bear in mind at this point it's presumably fairly pure. Average street coke is ~30% pure, so you could get 36 tonnes of average coke out of this.