Cocaine Worth £1m Sent To UN 'By Mistake'

 

A 16kg shipment of cocaine lost by Mexican drug traffickers has turned up at the United Nations headquarters in New York.

Two fake UN diplomatic pouches containing the drugs, which experts said had a street value of more than $2m (£1.3m), sparked an alert when they were delivered to the UN HQ by accident.


The bags, which were printed with the UN symbol, were shipped from Mexico through DHL's shipping company centre in Cincinnati, Ohio.

They had no address on them or any return to sender details and it is believed staff decided to send them to the UN because of the packaging.

Stamping the bags with the sky-blue UN logo of a world map was apparently an attempt to disguise them as diplomatic pouches, which are not supposed to be inspected.

Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne, from the New York Police Department, said: "It is my understanding that because there was no addressee, the DHL just thought 'Well, that's the UN symbol so we should ship it on to UN headquarters and let them figure out who it was supposed to go to.'"

The bags were "obvious fakes" and were quickly intercepted by security staff.
Inside, they found 14 hardback books hollowed out and filled with cocaine.

Mr Browne said: "Somebody in Mexico is probably in trouble now, having let a significant amount of cocaine out of their possession."

UN assistant secretary general Gregory Starr, who is in charge of UN security, said there was no evidence that anyone from the organisation was linked to the bags.

"This did not come from a United Nations facility. It was not, in my opinion, intended to go to a United Nations facility," he said.

"In my humble opinion, this was the work of narcotics traffickers that were trying to ship something into the United States and their plan must have gone wrong."