French navy seizes 10.7 tonnes of cocaine off African coast

BREST: The French navy has seized 10.7 tonnes of cocaine with a street value of hundreds of millions of dollars from a Brazilian fishing boat in the Gulf of Guinea, officials said Wednesday.

The operation off the west African coast last Thursday targeted a Brazilian-flagged boat measuring around twenty meters (66 feet). French authorities requested the raid based on a tip-off from the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), France’s Atlantic maritime prefecture said.

The 10,693 kilogrammes of cocaine seized had an “estimated market value of nearly 695 million euros” ($754 million), the prefecture added.

The Brest public prosecutor’s office, which holds jurisdiction over such cases, ordered the destruction of the drugs but decided not to prosecute the crew.

The French navy stations one to two ships supported by a maritime patrol aircraft in the Gulf of Guinea as part of a longstanding security operation.