Dutch police catch truck driver hauling €191 million in cocaine

Authorities in the Netherlands arrested the driver of a truck that was used to transport a massive shipment of cocaine valued at over 191 million euros. The truck was stopped near Barendrecht on Saturday. “When officers opened the doors of the shipping container, hundreds of blocks of cocaine fell onto the street,” the Public Prosecution Service (OM) said.

The driver, a 27-year-old Romanian man, was taken into custody. He will face a hearing before an examining magistrate on Tuesday, who can choose to extend the suspect’s initial detention by up to 14 days.

Officials in the Netherlands received a tip that a drug shipment from Belgium was headed to the Netherlands. They spotted the truck, with Belgian license plates, and ordered it taken off the highway near the Zuid-Holland city.

Once the bricks of cocaine tumbled out of the vehicle, a specialist team from the Dutch Customs office was called in for assistance. They drove the truck to a secure area at the Rotterdam port.

“In the end, 1,815 packages of cocaine, with a net weight of 1,822 kilograms, were counted there. The street value of the narcotics is more than 191 million euros,” the OM stated on Monday. “The drugs have since been destroyed.”