THREE members of Venezuela’s National Guard have been arrested on suspicion of involvement in the smuggling of a massive haul of cocaine on an Air France flight from Caracas to Paris.

French police have seized a record haul of 1.3 tonnes of pure cocaine, stored in 31 suitcases in the hold of an Air France flight to Paris from Venezuela. Not one was registered to a real passenger.
The drugs, which had a street value of €200M , were reportedly destined for the Calabrian Mafia known as the ‘Ndrangheta. The Italian criminal organisation is reputed to control 80 per cent of the cocaine exported from Latin America to Europe, after moving into drug trafficking in the 1970s.
The French police, cooperating with British, Spanish and Dutch colleagues, arrested several people last Friday when they confiscated 900 kilos of cocaine at Charles de Gaulle airport. A further 400 kilos were found inside a lorry heading from Paris to Luxembourg after arriving from Venezuela. Together, it was the biggest ever drugs haul on French soil.
The arrests came after weeks of investigation. All of the colourful 31 suitcases containing the drugs which were checked in for the Caracas to Paris Air France flight were registered to fictitious passengers. The suspects, of various nationalities, were still being questioned on Sunday on charges of belonging to an international drugs smuggling ring. Police will be trying to establish whether the traffickers were working with airline or airport insiders.
Venezuelan police are also investigating how the shipment came to be on the plane. Venezuela is not a cocaine producing country but is becoming a trafficking hub.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says Venezuela does not produce sizeable quantities of cocaine, but it has become a transit country for cocaine from Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia, which is shipped to the United States and Europe.