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| Bottles of Coca-Cola on an assembly line at a factory near Paris.Credit Lionel Bonaventure/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
This week workers at a Coca-Cola factory in the French town
of Signes, near the Mediterranean coast, uncovered a drug-smuggling operation
with a French connection, when they found a huge cache of cocaine worth
approximately $56 million in a shipment of orange juice concentrate.
The drug was hidden in bags among a delivery of orange juice
concentrate and amounted to 370 kilograms, making it one of the largest such
discoveries on French soil. The shipment arrived in a container from South
America.
The prosecutor of Toulon, Xavier Tarabeux, called the find
“a very bad surprise” and said it had a street value of 50 million euros, or
about $56 million.
“The first elements
of the investigation show that employees are in no way involved,” Jean-Denis
Malgras, the company’s regional president, told the Var-Matin news website.
Coca leaves were reportedly used in the original Coca-Cola
drink in the 19th century, although the company has said cocaine has never been
an “added ingredient”.
edited from The New York Times
edited from The New York Times
