By STEPHEN WRIGHT

Last updated at 10:12 03 January 2008

When a slim but busty woman was stopped as she tried to enter Britain, Customs officers discovered a new item of underwear - the Plunderbra.

With secret pouches placed in each cup, up to £50,000 worth of cocaine can be concealed as traffickers seek ever more inventive ways of smuggling drugs.

It is discovered only if the trafficker is strip-searched or asked to go through a scanner.

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Pictures of the modified lingerie show the lengths to which traffickers will go to bring cocaine into Britain from West Africa, in particular Ghana.

Other examples revealed yesterday include hollowed-out coat hangers, which can each contain £5,000 worth of cocaine, converted buttons, curtain beads, shoes and suitcases.

Tins of fruit juice, rum bottles and toiletries are also used - as are clothes which have been soaked in the drug.

Without doubt the most dangerous technique involves the trafficker swallowing vast quantities of cocaine to avoid detection.

One recent case involved a drugs mule from Nigeria consuming 100 plastic bags shaped like cocktail sausages, each containing 12 grams of cocaine with a total street value of £60,000.

Had even one burst open in the smuggler's stomach, the consequences would have been dire.

They were analysed by experts at the Forensic Science Service, which plays a key role in gathering evidence on behalf of Customs officials, and the suspect is now awaiting trial.

Details of the methods used by drugs traffickers emerged as two British schoolgirls prepare to be sentenced in Ghana for trying to smuggle £300,000 of cocaine into London.

Yatunde Diya and Yasemin Vatansever, both 16, are expected to be sentenced to up to three years in youth detention this month.

Narcotics officers say the girls were "mules" paid £3,000 each to carry laptop bags with the drugs on a flight to Britain last July.

The girls, pupils at City and Islington College in London, claimed they did not know the drugs were in their luggage.

Vatansever is the daughter of immigrants from Cyprus, while Diya is of Nigerian descent. Both are UK citizens.

They were held trying to board a British Airways flight to Heathrow carrying two bags containing more than 13lb of cocaine.

The swoop followed an operation - codenamed Operation Westbridge - involving Customs officials based in Ghana.

Following a crackdown on drugs mules travelling to Britain from Jamaica, there has been a marked increase in smugglers travelling from West Africa.

A spokesman for Revenue and Customs said: "One of the most significant trends concerns the amount of drugs being imported from Ghana.

"We had a big problem in Jamaica several years ago when hundreds of swallowers were trying to enter Britain each year.

"As a result, Customs sent officials to Jamaica to work with their officials. Within a couple of years, the number of people detained dropped from 1,000 to just five."

The operation's success prompted drugs barons to look for alternative routes - most notably West Africa.

"This is the new route for drugs traffickers," added the spokesman. "Large numbers of drug smugglers are now trying to enter Britain from Ghana, Gambia and Senegal.

"To be fair, the Ghanaian Governmentquickly recognised the potential-scale of the problem and decided they didn't want to end up with the reputation of Jamaica.

"They got in touch with us and Operation Westbridge was set up in 2006. Scanners were installed at airports and there is now much better intelligence and analysis to identify traffickers.

"In the first year of Westbridge, more than £ 60million worth of cocaine was seized."

Despite the success, Customs officials based in Ghana say the smuggling threat there remains "very serious".