Three foreign nationals have been arrested after the Judicial Police (PJ) seized around five tonnes of cocaine from a Hong Kong-flagged container ship intercepted off the Portuguese coast in one of Portugal’s largest-ever drug busts.
The PJ announced on Wednesday that the operation had dismantled a criminal group dedicated to smuggling large quantities of cocaine into Europe using commercial shipping. The final haul exceeded the initial estimate of four tonnes announced on Tuesday.
The vessel, which had departed from a Latin American country, was detected around 1,185 kilometres west of Lisbon during an international investigation coordinated through the Maritime Analysis and Operations Centre – Narcotics (MAOC-N).
