Brazil. They found half a ton of cocaine on a Polish ship in Brazil. Divergent versions of PŻM and police

As Krzysztof Gogol, spokesman for the Polska Żegluga Morska (PŻM) group, said, the sailors discovered the drugs on Friday.

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– Officers who arrived at the scene by helicopter revealed that the packages contained drugs. The police initiated an investigation into the discovered contraband. An interrogation of the crew members is planned for tomorrow (Monday – editor). No one was detained, Gogol said.

The bulk carrier of the Polish Maritime Shipping Company “Jawor” arrived at Brazil from Rotterdam. From Sao Luis it is to sail with a cargo of grain to Cartagena in Spain. Gogol, in an interview with PAP, noted that a drug route from South America to Europe runs through Brazilian ports. – And commercial ships are increasingly used by drug cartels as a means of transporting drugs – said the PŻM spokesman.

According to a spokesman for PŻM, the drugs were planted at night when the ship was waiting at an anchorage before entering the port. As Gogol said, a small unit probably approached the ship, boarded it and hid the drugs. – They were placed in one of the compartments known as void space. It is an empty room between the superstructure and the holds – described the PŻM spokesman.

He emphasized that such rooms on the ship are sealed. When the ship was at anchor, the seals were checked regularly. On Friday morning, there was no seal at the entrance to this compartment, which was noticed by one of the sailors and alerted the vessel's captain, who took further action by informing the shipowner.

Notified about the suspicious cargo, the police sent a helicopter with officers to the ship, who determined that the parcels probably contained cocaine. Gogol said there were a dozen or so packages. Each weighed 40 kg. They were wrapped in black foil.

Brazilian federal police said in a statement that a total of half a ton of drugs had been seized. It was reported that the cargo seized from the ship was the largest shipment of cocaine seized in the history of Maranhao State.

The versions of the police and PŻM differ. According to a statement issued by the police, officers located cocaine on the ship before the Bahamas-flagged vessel moored in the port of Itaqui in the city of Sao Luis, Maranhao. “It is suspected that the drug was transferred on board with the help of crew members,” the statement reads. It emphasized that the seized drugs would be burned.

The police also said that in this case, the perpetrators, who are currently unknown, may be charged with drug trafficking and participation in a criminal organization.

The crew of the bulk carrier “Jawor” consists of 20 people – Poles, Ukrainians, Bulgarians and Romanians. The families of the seafarers and the Polish authorities have already been notified about the incident. Gogol said that PŻM informed about the matter, among others. Deputy Minister of Infrastructure Arkadiusz Marchewka.

Brazilian police also announced the seizure, together with the country's navy soldiers, of over 100 kilograms of drugs in the port of Santos in the east of the country. According to the findings of the Brazilian portal g1, this unit was going to Poland.

The recordings made during the seizure of drugs, most likely cocaine, show that they were hidden under the hull of the bulk carrier “Guardian”. This unit flies the flag of the Marshall Islands. In the video, shared, among others, through the g1 portal, divers can be seen extracting four large packages from the ship, in which drugs were hidden. The Brazilian Navy described it as a substance “with cocaine-like properties.”

“This material will undergo specialized tests to confirm that it is cocaine,” g1 reported, specifying that the drugs were discovered on Thursday.

Quoting the Brazilian services, the portal specified that the drug stash was located “under the ship's hull plating below the water level.”