Putumayo. In the context of the struggle that the National Navy is holding in the south of the country against the drug trafficking organizations, a decisive operation was carried out. It led to the capture of two individuals and the finding of more than one and a half tons of marijuana, an important quantity of money in Brazilian and Colombian currency and armament and ammunition, in the department of Putumayo.
During the night, men of the National Navy conducted river surveillance and control operations. They observed a boat that was passing through the waters of the Putumayo River, evading the fluvial control checkpoint in the village of El Encanto, Amazonas. Immediately a Fluvial Support Boat begins the pursuit of the motorboat with four crew on board, two of them, when noticing the presence of the military, jumped into the river and escaped in the dark of the night. Thanks to the rapid reaction of the troops it is possible to stop the boat with two crew members and later it was towed to the control checkpoint.
In the boat, troops found 57 bags with 1,496 packages, which contained 1,566 kilograms of marijuana, 1 rifle, 1 magazine, 155 cartridges of 5.56 mm and 100 gallons of mixed gasoline. In the same way, troops also found 440,000 pesos and 4,248 Brazilian reales, equivalent to nearly 4 million Colombian pesos.
With this seizure of this large amount of marijuana, the logistics of drug trafficking won’t receive more than 13 billion Colombian pesos; each kilo of marijuana has a cost in the South American market of approximately $ 2,950 dollars.
The two individuals, 19 and 60, were taken on board an aircraft to the municipality of Puerto Leguízamo where they were brought to the authorities for their prosecution for the crimes of drug trafficking and trafficking of weapons of the Military Forces’ exclusive use. The material was destroyed at the place; the money, the boat, the armament and the ammunition were put into custody of the authorities.
Source: Southern Naval Force
