Cocaine Bust: Suspects Were Under Surveillance For Up To Two Years - NACOC

The Narcotics Control Commission (NACOC) says the suspects arrested in connection with the recent 3.9-tonne cocaine seizure by French Customs had been on its watch list for between one and two years.

Acting Director of Public Affairs and International Relations at NACOC, PNCO Francis Opoku Amoah, disclosed that the Commission had been tracking the suspects based on intelligence on their activities before deciding on the right time to swoop.

Speaking to the media on Saturday, September 19, Mr. Opoku Amoah explained that the arrests were the result of a sustained intelligence-led operation.

"The people that we arrested are people that we have been working on for some time. Their activities came to the attention of NACOC and we placed them under surveillance, waiting for the appropriate time to move in," he said.

He added that the surveillance period spanned between a year and two years, largely because of intelligence linking the group to a fugitive Dutch drug baron who is on the wanted list of several European countries.

According to him, investigations revealed that the operation was not a one-man job, which required NACOC to widen its net to capture all persons linked to the syndicate at once.

"We realized it was not just one person involved, so we had to ensure that all those connected at the time were arrested, if possible at the same time. That is what we did," he noted.

The coordinated arrests, carried out last Sunday, formed part of efforts to dismantle the network behind the shipment.

President John Dramani Mahama has since ordered the establishment of an inter-agency task force to come up with a comprehensive roadmap to prevent drug trafficking through Ghana's borders. The task force has been given two weeks to present its report after an emergency meeting between the President and security chiefs on Thursday, September 17.

It will be recalled that on September 7, French Customs officers at the Port of Dunkirk intercepted a container carrying plastic waste shipped from Ghana and destined for Antwerp in Belgium. Upon search, the container was found to contain 167 bales of cocaine weighing 3.9 metric tonnes, with an estimated street value of 225 million Euros, about $261 million.

French authorities said the interception followed prior surveillance of the network by judicial police. France's National Jurisdiction against Organised Crime has since opened an investigation into organised importation of narcotics and criminal association.