Cocaine worth €750K seized while smuggling to Australia, 2 held

Finnish Customs seized about four kilograms of cocaine during an attempted smuggling from Vantaa, Finland to Australia in the autumn, said customs in a press release on Wednesday.

Packages that contained narcotics were being sent using information belonging to a Finnish company.

The company, however, is not complicit in any way.

Customs officers uncovered the aggravated narcotics offence when they were controlling postal parcels bound for abroad in the facilities of an express freight company in Vantaa.

The authority detained two suspects on the following day in Helsinki and seized about 10 000 euros in cash from their apartment.

The suspects are Albanian citizens and remain detained. The case will be forwarded to the Prosecution District of Southern Finland for consideration of charges.

“The case in which charges are now being weighed shows that criminals not only see Finland as a target country with high sales margins, but also as a transit country for shipments of narcotics, and as part of the complex logistics chain in the global drugs market,” said lead investigator Tuomas Korhonen.

The seized cocaine was strong, and the street value of a cut quantity would have been almost 750 000 euros in Finland.

The price in Australia would have been considerably higher, as the price for a gram of cocaine in Australia is among the highest in the world.

A family company in Riihimäki was indicated as the sender of the packages. The company has no connection with the criminal case under investigation.

“It looks like businesses that are honest and complete bystanders are being used in covering up criminal activity. Companies’ transport units as well as their business details can be misused. We have also dealt with cases where information regarding private individuals who have had nothing to do with criminal activity have been used in criminal offences,” said Hannu Sinkkonen, Director of Enforcement of Finnish Customs.

When the case was under preliminary investigation, it came to light that the suspects had previously sent a package to Australia in the name of the same bystander company.