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Cannabis worth millions seized at Swedish port

The Local Sweden
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Cannabis worth millions seized at Swedish port
A file photo of a Swedish police cannabis find not related to the story. Photo: Polisen

A major drugs bust in Sweden has resulted in police seizing 300 kilograms of cannabis with an estimated value of millions of dollars.

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Two men were arrested last week after driving off a ferry from Gdynia in Poland to Karlskrona in southern Sweden. Almost 300kg of cannabis was found in their truck, Swedish public service broadcaster SVT reports.

According to a Swedish Customs Agency (Tullverket) estimation, the haul could be worth as much as 30 million kronor ($3.39 million).

“There's clearly a smuggling network out there that will be really annoyed about this right now. We’re talking about a large sum of money,” Sven-Petr Ohlsson from Tullverket told SVT.

The bust is one of the biggest drug finds in Sweden in recent years, and follows a pattern shared by previous examples.

In 2012, 400kg of cannabis was found by Tullverket in a truck at the port in Helsingborg in the southwest of the country. That stash was estimated to be worth 40 million kronor ($4.52 million).

“It’s organized smuggling where trucks that come to Sweden work like Trojan horses. They hide in the flood of traffic that occurs when for example a ferry comes in. It was one such Trojan horse that we stopped in this example from Karlskrona,” Ohlsson explained.

The two men who were on the truck have been remanded in custody accused of serious drug smuggling, and more people are expected to be called for questioning.

Though Sweden has a reputation for being a progressive nation, it is strict when it comes to illicit drugs. In July 2015, two men were jailed for a combined five and a half years for growing around 31 kg of marijuana in a disused school building.

That same month, US rapper Snoop Dogg was arrested on suspicion of using illegal drugs after a concert in Uppsala. The investigation into him was later dropped, despite Swedish police saying he had tested positive for narcotics, because it was not possible to prove that he consumed drugs on Swedish soil.

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