Britain seizes largest ever cocaine haul

Police have seized Britain’s largest ever cocaine haul, worth up to £300 million, from a luxury yacht which had sailed from the Caribbean, officials said yesterday.

The 1.2-tonne stash was found hidden under the bathing deck of the pleasure cruiser docked in the port of Southampton in southeast England, Britain’s Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) and UK Border Agency (UKBA) said. Police believe the drugs were loaded onto the boat in Venezuela.

In dawn raids on Tuesday, Dutch police, acting on intelligence from British and French authorities, arrested six men suspected to be involved in an international drugs ring responsible for the shipment.

Officials said it was the largest haul of Class A drugs – classified as those most likely to cause harm – ever found in Britain.

Authorities were alerted to suspicions over the yacht, named Louise, while it was in the British Virgin Islands in the Caribbean in May.

The boat was then intercepted in Southampton in June on its way to The Netherlands.

Dutch police arrested the yacht’s owner, 60, after raiding his home in the town of Meppel, about 140 kilometres northeast of Amsterdam, and raided a yachting business premises in the southern Dutch town of Waalwijk.

They also arrested the owner’s three sons, aged 34, 32 and 27 and two other associates, both aged 44, a Dutch prosecutors’ spokesman said.