Police officers found a suspicious-looking bag on the hillside of Vulcanello, reports the press office of the Carabinieri of northern Sicily. Inside were packages of drugs weighing 42 kilograms in total.
Vulcanello lies north of the larger volcano della Fossa. Together they form the island of Vulcano – one of 17 in the archipelago of the Aeolian Islands, which stretches in the northern waters of Sicily. The Milazzo Carabinieri press office reported finding a suspicious bag in the area on Tuesday afternoon.
In the foreground: Vulcanello
A shipment worth almost 4 million euros
– Officers found that there were 32 packets of white powder in the bag. Tests confirmed that it was a psychoactive substance in the form of cocaine, separated into packages with a total weight of 42 kilograms, inform the carabinieri.
The value of such an amount of the drug on the black market can be around 3.8 million euros, journalists from “Giornale di Sicilia” estimate.
The goods have been handed over to the police laboratory and will be tested. Carabinieri will try to determine who left the parcels and who could be their potential recipient.
Black market value of packages: €3.8 millionCarabinieri Messina
Drug routes between Africa and Sicily
The daily “Corriere della Sera” reminds that two weeks ago, on the southern coast of Sicily, a group of WWF volunteers made a similar discovery. While cleaning the beaches around the town of Agrigento, they found well-packaged packages of drugs.
In September last year, tourists found 40 bags with an unknown substance. Police tests showed it was hashish.
On December 1 last year, carabiniers from Campobello di Mazara (west of Sicily) found a package with 670 grams of hashish – exactly in the same place where in February 2021 they found as much as 36 kilograms of this drug.
“Similar actions are repeated too often for anyone to consider it a coincidence. This has been going on since at least 2015, and Sicilian investigators are well aware that it looks like a specific scenario of action” – writes “Corriere”.
Vulcano is one of 17 in the archipelago of the Aeolian IslandsShutterstock
Cocaine packages and inconsistencies in history. First they saved them, now they’re looking for them
“Investigators know that the packages travel the ‘drug routes’ that connect North Africa to Sicily. They assume that smugglers throw packages weighing 25-40 kilograms into the water, then provide the coordinates to the merchants, who intercept them on their decks and drop them off at night on less frequented In winter, GPS transmitters or buoys are attached to parcels, because sea currents can change their location.
Over the past eight years, almost a ton of drugs have been seized on the shores of Sicily: cocaine, hashish, marijuana.
carabinieri.it, Corriere della Sera, Giornale di Sicilia
Main photo source: Shutterstock