Arrests due after massive haul of 'charcoal' cocaine 

€35m worth of cocaine was seized inside two containers in Rotterdam and transferred to Ireland with the help of the Irish navy

The cocaine was concealed in bags of coal. Picture: Gardaí

Colombian traffickers are constantly engineering covert ways to smuggle cocaine into Europe and “have no problems with budgets”, a top EU drug officer has said.

Michael O’Sullivan, head of the EU Maritime Analysis and Operations Centre – Narcotics (MAOC-N), said that if these traffickers can send a “narco-submarine” across the Atlantic they have no problem “painting cocaine black” and extracting the drug afterwards.