In a statement, Italy’s Guardia di Finanza police force said the consignment of drugs worth more than 800 million euros ($880 million) was found in refrigerated banana containers shipped to the Calabrian port of Gioia Tauro from Ecuador.
Armenia was the final destination of the shipment, via Georgia’s Black Sea port of Batumi, said the statement.
Calabria is home to the Ndrangheta crime syndicate, which is now widely regarded as Italy's most powerful mafia organization playing a central role in the drugs trade.
Earlier this month, the Italian police also found in Gioia Tauro 600 kilograms of cocaine which they said was bound for other parts of Italy as well as Croatia, Greece and Georgia.
Armenian law-enforcement authorities did not immediately react to their latest major drug bust. It was not clear whether the authorities will try to investigate the alleged cocaine shipment to Armenia foiled in Italy.
Agnessa Khamoyan, an Armenian opposition parliamentarian, expressed serious concern over the development. She suggested that senior Armenian officials or “persons very close to the government” were involved in the botched drug trafficking operation.
The number of drug trafficking cases recorded by the Armenian police nearly doubled last year, highlighting a growing problem in a country not accustomed to widespread drug abuse. The sharp rise in such cases is widely blamed on increasingly accessible synthetic drugs mainly sold through the internet.
Khamoyan mentioned this “awful statistics” in a Facebook post on the Italian police statement. “This is a serious threat to national security, and I am sorry to say that the state is not taking any serious steps to tackle it,” she wrote.
Some pro-government lawmakers likewise criticized the Armenian police over the alarming trend when they met with Interior Minister Vahe Ghazarian in February. Ghazarian assured them that the police are stepping up their fight against drug-related crimes.
