Genoa, major seizure of heroin in the port: 140 kg hidden in 60.000 concrete bricks

The State Police and the Customs Agency of Genoa conducted a brilliant operation which culminated in the seizure of approximately 140 kilograms of high-purity heroin, hidden inside ten containers, arrived by sea from the Middle East and destined, after disembarking in the port of Genoa (Sampierdarena basin), to be transported to Northern Europe. The investigation, developed with analytical rigor and cutting-edge methodologies, started from a'intelligence activities, through which the Customs Anti-Fraud Department and the agents of the Investigation Sector of the Border Police have A suspicious shipment of ten containers filled with concrete bricks arriving by ship from Iran and apparently destined for Warsaw, Poland has been detected.

Although initial checks carried out with scanning tools had not detected any anomalies in the cargo, the policemen and the customs officers, supported by agents of the European Agency FRONTEX, demonstrating uncommon intuition and investigative tenacity, they have nevertheless decided to examine one by one the more than 60.000 bricks packed in the containers, thus discovering a revealing detail: an imperceptible sign on the short side of some bricks, hidden in the innermost parts of the various pallets stored in each container and therefore not visible to even a careful external inspection, whose breaking finally allowed the drug to be found, hidden inside plastic-coated containers that had been specifically immersed in the cement mix during the production phases.

From that moment on, the operators, proceeding without stopping for three days and three nights, proceeded to manually break all the bricks, seizing a total of, at the end of the complex verification, over 500 packages of heroin, each weighing approximately 275 grams, packaged and hidden with ingenious meticulousness by an international criminal organization, with ramifications in the Middle East and Northern Europe, evidently equipped with sophisticated means. This operation and the seizure of such a significant quantity of heroin confirm, once again, how the port of Genoa plays a leading role in the chain of large international drug trafficking, but at the same time forcefully reiterate the clear ability of the State to contrast the phenomenon through its forces responsible for protecting the borders.