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LATIN AMERICA |
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Ecuadorian
Police Locate 4.3 Tons of Cocaine in Quito
House
QUITO – Ecuadorian police discovered 4.3
tons of cocaine in a house on Quito’s north
side, where earlier this week they reported
finding another 3.8 tons of the alkaloid,
the local press said Saturday.
The Police Department’s Fight against
Organized Crime Unit, or ULCO, as part of an
operation called “Anniversary,” discovered
the new stash hidden behind a fake wall of
the home, the daily Expreso said in its
online edition.
On Wednesday, police said they found 3.8
tons of cocaine in the same house, hidden
under fake flooring, and said that they
suspected that the house was used by a
drug-trafficking ring for storing the drug.
According to officials in charge of the
operation, the suspected ring supposedly
operated in Ecuador, Colombia, Mexico, the
United States and Spain, and had a
laboratory for processing drugs, the biggest
yet discovered in Ecuador.
The operation was carried out in the
provinces of Sucumbios, Pichincha, Cotopaxi
and Guayas. According to local media, five
Ecuadorians and two Colombians were
arrested.
The national chief of the police
anti-narcotics squad, Joel Loayza, said that
the drug “came from Colombia, was shipped by
road (in Ecuador), to be stockpiled in
storerooms under the cover of non-existent
companies.
According to Loayza, the ring’s center of
operations was set up in Quito, while in La
Mana in Cotopaxi province south of the
capital it operated a chemical-processing
lab for drugs where it is estimated that
about 5 tons of cocaine were produced each
week.
In addition, on the road that goes from Lago
Agrio, in the province of Sucumbios on the
Colombian border, to Quito, the police
intercepted a few days ago a truck with
military emblems in which two people wearing
Ecuadorian army uniforms were riding.
The army said that those in custody did not
belong to the military, since one of them is
retired and the other was discharged, and
that the truck was not part of the army’s
inventory.
Found hidden in that vehicle were 557 kilos
(1,227 pounds) of the total amount of drug
seized in different parts of the country,
including the house on the north side of
Quito.
The Ecuadorian police’s director of
intelligence, Fabian Solano, said Wednesday
that his unit is “verifying” the evidence to
determine “to which cartel or to which
organization these drugs belong.”
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