Colombia makes its largest cocaine bust in a decade

BOGOTA, Colombia — Colombia made its largest cocaine bust in a decade, authorities announced Friday, with 14 tons confiscated at its main Pacific port amid tensions with Washington, which has branded Bogota’s anti-drug policies insufficient.

The seizure in the world’s largest cocaine-producing country comes as the White House threatens President Gustavo Petro with financial sanctions and Colombia’s removal from the list of allies in the war on drugs.

The cocaine, stored in dozens of 50-kilogram (110-pound) sacks inside a warehouse, was “camouflaged” in a mixture with plaster, the Defense Ministry posted on X.

It was “the largest seizure by the Colombian police in the last decade,” said Petro, whose term ends in nine months.

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The operation was carried out — “without a single death,” according to Petro — in the southwestern port of Buenaventura, a strategic departure point for Colombian cocaine.

Petro is critical of Donald Trump’s anti-drug strategy and has rejected as “extrajudicial executions” the bombings that the US president has authorized against boats suspected of carrying drugs in the Caribbean and the Pacific.

Colombia regularly breaks its own annual record for coca leaf cultivation and powder cocaine production.

It has some 253,000 hectares (625,000 acres) under drug cultivation and produces at least 2,600 tons of cocaine, according to United Nations figures for 2023, the most recent available.

Petro considers Trump’s sanctions unfair and claims that record seizures have been made under his government.