The 2019 Philadelphia Packer Marine Terminal cocaine seizure was a large-scale drug enforcement operation that was conducted by the United States government during the summer of 2019. It was the largest cocaine seizure in U.S. Customs and Border Protection's 230-year history, the largest cocaine seizure in U.S. history, [1] and the fourth largest worldwide. [2] The ship was owned by JP Morgan Chase. [3]
On June 18, 2019, federal authorities seized 39,525 pounds (nearly twenty tons) of cocaine [4] [5] [6] at the Port of Philadelphia's Packer Marine Terminal. The street value of the drugs is estimated at $1.3 billion. [7] [6] According to the U.S. Attorney's Office it was the largest seizure in the history of the Office of the District Attorney of Eastern Pennsylvania. The Mediterranean Shipping Company's container ship, the MSC Gayane (IMO number 9770763), was heading from Chile to Europe with previous stops in Peru, Colombia and the Bahamas. [4] Six members of the crew were arrested. [5] [8] [9] [4] The seizure is the largest cocaine seizure in U.S. Customs and Border Protection's 230-year history, the largest cocaine seizure in U.S. history, [10] and fourth largest worldwide. [11] [5]
The MSC Gayane was met by law enforcement vessels and boarded by about a dozen federal agents while heading into Delaware Bay. The ship was escorted into the Port of Philadelphia's Packer Marine Terminal. Once docked, the authorities found nearly 20 tons of cocaine. Eight members of the crew have been charged in the arrest. The vessel was seized by the U.S. Attorney General and the Mediterranean Shipping Company posted a $50 million bond to gain the release of the vessel. [12]
As of August 31, 2021 all eight crew members charged with crimes have been sentenced. [13]
On October 31, 2022, former professional heavyweight boxer Goran Gogic was charged with one count of conspiracy to violate the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act and three counts of violating the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act in relation to the MSC Gayane bust. [14]
The illegal drug trade, drug trafficking, or narcotrafficking is a global black market dedicated to the cultivation, manufacture, distribution and sale of prohibited drugs. Most jurisdictions prohibit trade, except under license, of many types of drugs through the use of drug prohibition laws. The think tank Global Financial Integrity's Transnational Crime and the Developing World report estimates the size of the global illicit drug market between US$426 and US$652 billion in 2014 alone. With a world GDP of US$78 trillion in the same year, the illegal drug trade may be estimated as nearly 1% of total global trade. Consumption of illegal drugs is widespread globally, and it remains very difficult for local authorities to reduce the rates of drug consumption.
USS Gettysburg (CG-64) is a Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser in the United States Navy. She is named for the Battle of Gettysburg during the American Civil War.
USS Rodney M. Davis (FFG-60) was an Oliver Hazard Perry-class guided missile frigate of the United States Navy named for Marine Sergeant Rodney Maxwell Davis (1942–1967), who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroism in the Vietnam War.
SLNS Vijayabahu (P627) is an Advanced Offshore Patrol Vessel of the Sri Lanka Navy. The ship is named after King Vijayabahu I, the warrior king of the medieval Sri Lanka who founded the Kingdom of Polonnaruwa.
HMCS Whitehorse is a Kingston-class coastal defence vessel that has served in the Canadian Forces since 1998. Whitehorse is the sixth ship of her class. The first vessel named for the city in the Yukon, the ship is assigned to Maritime Forces Pacific (MARPAC) and is homeported at CFB Esquimalt.
The Golden Triangle is a large, mountainous region of approximately 200,000 km2 (77,000 sq mi) in northeastern Myanmar, northwestern Thailand and northern Laos, centered on the confluence of the Ruak and Mekong rivers. The name "Golden Triangle" was coined by Marshall Green, a U.S. State Department official, in 1971 in a press conference on the opium trade. Today, the Thai side of the river confluence, Sop Ruak, has become a tourist attraction, with the House of Opium Museum, a Hall of Opium, and a Golden Triangle Park, and no opium cultivation.
The 2006 Mexico DC-9 drug bust was a 2006 arrest that resulted in the seizure of 5.5 tons of cocaine in the Mexican city of Ciudad del Carmen. The drugs were smuggled into the country using a McDonnell Douglas DC-9-15. Both plane and drugs were seized by Mexican authorities; according to the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), it was one of the largest seizures of narcotics in recent Mexican history.
Law Enforcement Detachments or LEDETs are specialized, deployable maritime law enforcement teams of the United States Coast Guard. First established in 1982, their primary mission is to deploy aboard U.S. and allied naval vessels to conduct counter-drug operations and support maritime law enforcement, interdiction, or security operations. LEDETs are the operational elements of the Coast Guard’s two Tactical Law Enforcement Teams (TACLETs) which are part of the Coast Guard’s Deployable Specialized Forces (DSF). As of April 2010 there are seventeen LEDETs.
USCGC Hamilton (WHEC-715) was a United States Coast Guard high endurance cutter and the lead ship of its class. It was based at Boston, Massachusetts from commissioning until 1991, then out of San Pedro, California before it was moved to its last home port in San Diego, California. It was launched on December 18, 1965 at Avondale Shipyards near New Orleans, Louisiana and named for Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, the first United States Secretary of the Treasury and founder of the United States Revenue Cutter Service. It was commissioned on March 18, 1967.
USCGC Active (WMEC-618) is a United States Coast Guard medium endurance cutter. Active was launched at Christy Corporation, Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin on July 31, 1965. Commissioned on September 1, 1966, she is 210 feet (64 m) long, has a 34-foot (10 m) beam, displaces 1108 tons, and draws 13 feet (4.0 m) of water. She is powered by two diesel engines, combined for a total of 5,000 hp (3,700 kW). Quarters are provided for up to 12 officers and 70 enlisted members. Active's cruising range is 5,000 nautical miles (9,000 km) at 15 knots (28 km/h), designed with an operating endurance of about 30 days. At her top speed of 18 knots (33 km/h), Active has an approximate range of 2,200 nautical miles (4,070 km). Active's armament consists of a single 25 mm gun on the forecastle. The forecastle, bridge and fantail can also mount .50 caliber machine guns. The Active has a flight deck which allows for the deployment of a Coast Guard HH-65 Dolphin. USCGC Active has received several awards in recent years for its outstanding service to the maritime community, including oil spill clean ups in Prince William Sound, Alaska during the Exxon Valdez oil spill.
A narco-submarine is a type of custom ocean-going, self-propelled, semi-submersible or fully-submersible vessel built by drug smugglers.
The Grimaldi Group is a private shipping company owned by the Grimaldi family and based in Naples, Italy. Grimaldi operates a large fleet of ro-ro, ro-ro/multipurpose, con-ro multipurpose, PCTC, ro-pax and cruise ferries vessels.
Operation Seabight, or Sea Bight, is the codename used to describe the tracking and eventual seizure of up to €750 million[a][b] of cocaine off the Irish coast in November 2008, originally thought to have been the largest such haul in the history of Ireland and one of the largest in Europe in 2008. The figures were later revised to show that this was in fact the second largest haul in Irish history. The seizure took place off the south-west coast and eclipsed the discovery of €440 million of cocaine near Mizen Head in July 2007. A 60-foot (18 m) yacht containing more than seventy bales of the substance was seized by a team of European anti-drugs agencies led by Irish authorities. Three men were also apprehended and later each was sentenced to ten years in jail.
The Port of Gioia Tauro is a large seaport in southern Italy. It is the largest port in Italy for container throughput, the 9th in Europe and the 6th in Mediterranean sea. Located north of the city of Reggio Calabria, between the municipalities of Gioia Tauro and San Ferdinando, Calabria, it is close to the East–West route which stretches from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Suez Canal and serves mainly as a transshipment hub, connecting the global and regional networks that cross the Mediterranean.
Captain Charley L. Diaz is a 30-year United States Coast Guard veteran who served on Active Duty from 1982 to 2012. Diaz is best known for leading the crew of the USCGC Sherman (WHEC-720) in the seizure of the Panamanian freighter GATUN off the coast of Panama in March 2007, which netted nearly 20 tons of cocaine worth an estimated $600 million. It was the largest maritime drug bust in US history.
Operation Caribbe is the Canadian Armed Forces contribution to the elimination of illegal trafficking in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean by organized crime. The operation began in 2006 and its mandate has been altered twice since then. It operates as part of Operation Martillo.
Operation Martillo is an ongoing multi-national anti-drug operation that began on 15 January 2012, and "aims to combat international drug trafficking, and promote peace, stability in Central and South America", according to the U.S. Southern Command, as one of the public institutions involved in it. It is a defense project led by the United States Southern Command with help of multi-national forces from Latin American and European countries. News coverage of their activities and results began in 2012, but mainly from defense-focused media.
Maritime drug smuggling into Australia refers to the smuggling of illicit drugs into Australia by sea. While much contemporary Australian media coverage has focused on smaller, more personalised smuggling cases such as the Bali Nine, maritime drug smuggling often allows criminal groups to move illicit drugs and substances into Australia at a much greater scale. This has happened through a variety of ways, including via cargo ship, yacht, and fishing vessels. Key departure locations for drugs aimed to be smuggled into Australia include China, India, Southeast Asia, and the Americas, with much of the drugs trafficked via countries and territories in the South Pacific, in close proximity to Australia.
Maritime cocaine smuggling refers to the practice which involves the smuggling of cocaine between borders via maritime means. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), there are an estimated 18 million users of cocaine globally. Approximately 70-80% of cocaine is at some point smuggled across the ocean, originating from South America. Cocaine remains the "highest value criminal commodity for transnational organised crime", motivating the criminal organisations responsible for maritime smuggling practices. Maritime cocaine smuggling is therefore an ongoing international issue, as criminal organisations are finding new and innovative ways of smuggling cocaine and go undetected by authorities.
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