A French court on Friday jailed an Italian man for four years for trying to smuggle almost $1.2 million worth of cocaine into France in his car boot, the customs authority said.
Customs officials stopped the man, who was travelling alone and claimed to be returning from holiday in Morocco, on a side road near the Spanish border in southern France on December 6, it said.
Inspectors noticed the carpet of his car boot appeared not to be the original one and that it had been glued down in a strange way, leading them to find a secret compartment containing bricks of white powder wrapped up in brown tape.
“In total, 28 kilos of cocaine worth 1.1 million euros (almost $1.2 million) on the black market were seized,” the customs authority said.
The criminal court in the southern city of Perpignan sentenced the man to four years in jail as well as a customs fine of 2.1 million euros (almost $2.3 million), and banned him from France for five years.
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