German Police Find 850 Pounds of Cocaine in Case of Bananas

BERLIN (AP) — German police say they’ve found what they believe to be 384 kilograms (847 pounds) of cocaine in cases of bananas shipped from Ecuador.

An employee at a wholesale company in Leverkusen, just outside Cologne, alerted police on Saturday to the suspected drugs. Police said Monday that they found the substance in hundreds of one-kilogram packages hidden in 26 cases of bananas.

They say samples tested so far show that the powdery substance was cocaine. The cases were shipped to Hamburg and then taken by truck to Leverkusen.

Police found a GPS transmitter in one of the cases. They believe that traffickers planned to use it to locate the drugs quickly in large warehouses.

There was no immediate word on the haul’s street value.