Narco-submarines intercepted in $12 billion Pacific drug bust

Operation Orion exposes vast smuggling networks as Australia becomes lucrative market for cocaine dealers.

The Colombian navy intercepted narco-subs carrying drugs en route to Australia.

The Colombian navy seized three “narco-submarines” trafficking cocaine across the Pacific from South America to Australia, as part of a massive bust that intercepted drugs worth more than $8 billion (AUD 12.3 billion) over six weeks.

Operation Orion, involving co-operation with the security agencies of the United States, Brazil, Spain and the Netherlands, resulted in the seizure of 225 tonnes of cocaine and the confiscation of more than 1,000 tonnes of marijuana.

More than 400 people have been arrested. The amount of cocaine seized is thought to be a record haul.

As well as sharing intelligence, police forces used aircraft, helicopters and frigates to intercept the illegal shipments.

Vice-Admiral Orlando Enrique Grisales, chief of the naval operations staff of the Colombian navy, said the seizures had exposed new alliances between criminal networks in Latin America, Europe and Oceania. “Today they are organised networks that associate, not a pyramid structure like the old cartels,” he said.

The submarines sit very low in the water to try to avoid detection.

One of the intercepted submarines was found off the coast of Clipperton Island, an uninhabited French coral atoll in the eastern Pacific, more than 2,000 miles from the coast of Colombia.

It was carrying five tonnes of cocaine and had enough fuel to reach Australia. Its capture revealed a new drug trafficking route. Previously, Colombian sailors had found two other similar vessels heading to Australia, Grisales said.

Narco-subs are not usually fully submersible, but are instead ultra-low profile vessels that sit so low in the water as to be almost impossible to detect by radar. They are built using fibreglass-covered wood and can reach depths of up to three metres and generally carry four people as crew.

The submarines sit very low in the water to try to avoid detection.

A boat of this type can cost up to one million dollars to build and takes about two weeks to travel from Colombia to Australia.

Analysts said that the vessels sometimes rendezvous with conventional merchant ships at sea and transfer their cargo. If the larger ships have logged their departure from ports not considered suspicious, mostly in North America, they are often not subjected to scrutiny when they arrive in Australasia.

“This is a new route that they have opened for semi-submersibles. The vessel was found in the middle of nowhere, close to 3,000 miles off the Colombian coast heading to Australia and New Zealand,” Captain Manuel Rodriguez, director of the Colombian navy’s anti-narcotics unit, said.

It is thought to have started its journey from Tumaco, a Colombian Pacific port city, on its 4,000-mile journey direct to Australia.

Australia is becoming an increasingly important and lucrative market for cocaine traffickers. A shortage of the drug has caused its street price to soar to at least dollars 240,000 a kilo (AUD 369,000), about six times its price in the United States. Only in the Gulf states, where convicted drug dealers face the death penalty, are higher prices usually achieved.

Wastewater analysis by the Australian criminal intelligence commission this year showed a nationwide surge in cocaine use to its highest level since the organisation started collecting samples in 2016.

The Times