The Maltese connection

Malta is serving as a redistribution centre for drugs from South America.
Malta’s drug barons are behind bars at Kordin, cocaine worth 46 million marks destined for the Spanish market was being discovered in a container destined for the Malta Freeport.
The find included 514 kilogrammes of 90% pure cocaine and 25,000 ecstasy pills – representing a local market value of over Lm 20 million
The plan, according to German investigators, was to use yachts from Malta to ship the drugs to the Spanish mainland.
The federal criminal investigators in Germany were somehow tipped off that cocaine from Venezuela was being transhipped to Malta via Hamburg. There were 2,500 containers on the container ship Nedlloyd Kingston, The search carried out by the German and Italian police discovered 64 packages of the drug buried beneath 1,152 packs of work gloves at the rear of the container. The packages were hidden behind carbon paper, a practice that aims to render x-ray machines useless.
In a sting operation, investigators had removed the drugs and allowed the container to depart for Malta in order to apprehend those related to the case.