BERLIN, July 20 (Xinhua) -- The customs office in German city of Hamburg has seized a record 3.8 tons of cocaine originating from South America worth about 800 million euros (919 million U.S. dollars), Germany's Customs Directorate General said Thursday.
The cocaine packets, wrapped in colorful plastic and guarded by heavily armed special forces of the customs office, were stacked at the press conference in an army barracks in Hamburg.
The drugs are to be burned at a secret location.
The cocaine had been confiscated at the Hamburg harbor during three operations earlier this year. According to the authorities, the drugs have a purity of 85 to 90 percent.
A total of between 1.45 and 1.6 tons of cocaine were found in shipping containers from Paraguay in March and April. A further 788 kg were discovered in May in a shipping container from Uruguay.
The president of the Central Customs Authority, Uwe Schroeder, spoke of a temporal relation and certain parallels between the three findings.
The Secretary of State at the Federal Ministry of Finance, Werner Gatzer, said, "We have been able to deliver a blow to the market," adding this was the "largest find we had in Germany". (1 euro = 1.15 U.S. dollars)
