AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
In November 2013, Ghanaian authorities impounded a South American ship carrying 400 kilograms of cocaine and arrested its five-member crew, according to the Narcotics Control Board (NACOB), Ghana’s anti-narcotics agency.
The ship was registered in Guyana, and the street value of the drug was estimated at $50 million, authorities said. U.N. estimates place the drug value at approximately half that amount. “The vessel had been monitored at the high seas, and when she got into the Ghanaian waters, the Ghana Navy and NACOB officers arrested and escorted her to the Sekondi Naval Base,” authorities said in a statement.
In recent years, Ghana has become a transshipment point for traffickers moving cocaine and marijuana to Europe and the United States. In 2012, police at London’s Heathrow Airport intercepted a 1.5-metric-ton shipment of marijuana and a 7.5-kilogram shipment of cocaine hidden in peels of plantains, a staple food of the West African nation.