Seizure is a record amount; bananas allegedly came from Colombia

Prague, April 3 (ČTK) — The banana consignment for a Prague supermarket, in which cocaine was randomly found on Wednesday, contained a record of over 100 kilograms of the drug which, if diluted, would fetch up to 1 billion Kč ($40 million) in the street, anti-drug centre spokeswoman Barbora Kudláčková told the Czech News Agency today.

She said the Czech police or customs officers have never seized a bigger amount of cocaine.

According to ČTK’s information, the drug was found in an outlet of the Lidl chain.

Kudláčková would neither say whether it was found by an employee of the supermarket, nor which country the consignment came from.

Server tn.cz reported on Thursday that the cocaine was in a box with bananas from Colombia. No drugs were found in the other boxes containing bananas.

More than 100 kilograms of cocaine were also found as a result of a six-month police operation in March 1999. The 117 kilograms of drug were uncovered in a consignment of dried fruit.

Kudláčková said yesterday’s find is even bigger.

Several heroin shipments found in the past also amounted to hundreds of kilograms each.