The outer packaging depicting a hamster in a crown. Photo \/ NZ Customs<\/p>\n
Hidden amongst legitimate goods, Customs officers found two plastic-wrapped bags that contained 45 cocaine bricks.<\/p>\n
The street value of the drug was $15.75m.<\/p>\n
It comes after other recent busts at the port linked to Panama, including 33kg of cocaine worth $11.5m<\/a> in November, 21kg of cocaine<\/a> worth more than $7m in October and 157kg of cocaine worth $60.9m<\/a> split between two container vessels in July.<\/p>\n Customs manager maritime, Robert Smith, said Customs remained vigilant at New Zealand\u2019s seaports, working to disrupt crime groups from exploiting the maritime border and legitimate trade routes and shipments.<\/p>\n \u201cThis cocaine seizure demonstrates the ongoing work of Customs frontline officers who continue to put pressure on criminal networks, making it harder for them to operate through our seaports.\u201d<\/p>\n He said Customs took an intelligence-driven, multi-layered approach to protecting NZ\u2019s borders, and worked closely with industry stakeholders such as port and shipping and logistics companies.<\/p>\n Customs urged industry workers and the public to remain vigilant and report potential suspicious behaviour to Customs.<\/p>\n Suspicions about potential drug smuggling can be reported confidentially to 0800 WE PROTECT (0800 937 768) or anonymously via Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The outer packaging depicting a hamster in a crown. Photo \/ NZ Customs Hidden amongst legitimate goods, Customs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173096,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[111585,1975,1558,20926,50905,17899,71,42,1132,11692,43,1118,29268,12641,29936,5424,1227,40,38,41,39,32561,102,19985],"class_list":["post-173095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-16m","tag-at","tag-been","tag-cocaine","tag-container","tag-customs","tag-from","tag-headlines","tag-million","tag-nearly","tag-news","tag-of","tag-port","tag-seized","tag-seizes","tag-street","tag-tauranga","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-value","tag-with","tag-worth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} Customs seized 45kg of cocaine in Tauranga, including some branded with a Volvo logo. Photo \/ NZ Customs<\/p>\n