Three people have been charged in the United Kingdom for allegedly attempting to smuggle about $100 million worth of cocaine in a container of bananas, according to officials, marking the latest incidence of the illegal narcotic being hidden in a shipment of the tropical fruit.
Joshua Berry, 28, Daniel Dumitru, 37, and Andrew Smyth, 46, were arrested in Southhampton, England, and are due to appear in court on April 17, according to the National Crime Agency.
Berry was the last of the three to face charges in the case, and he appeared in court for the first time on Friday, the agency said. Dumitru and Smyth were each arrested and charged over two weeks ago.
Their arrests are part of the agency’s probe into a massive cocaine haul discovered at Southhampton Docks earlier this month. Officers with the border agency discovered more than 2,000 pounds (about 1 ton) of cocaine inside a cargo container filled with bananas that landed at the Southhampton port from Panama, despite authorities claiming it originated in Nicaragua. The narcotics had a street worth of nearly 75 million British pounds, or approximately $98.9 million.
According to U.K. sentence guidelines, the three men indicted could face up to life in jail if convicted.
“This is a massive amount of cocaine which was destined for the streets of the UK,” said Saju Sasikumar, a National Crime Agency branch commander, in a statement. “Seizing these drugs deprives the crime group behind the importation of huge profits that cannot be ploughed back into further offending.”
The decision to conceal cocaine inside a shipment of bananas is not unprecedented. Authorities around the world have reported in recent months that the chemical was seized from fruit shipments, including in Russia, Norway, the Dominican Republic, Greece, and Bulgaria, as well as the United Kingdom.
In February 2024, British authorities reported discovering more than 12,500 pounds of cocaine inside a shipment of bananas intercepted at Southhampton Docks. At the time, it was the country’s largest single hard drug seizure on record.