Seizures of Drugs Concealed in Products Shipped From Brazil are on the Rise

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The rise in the seizures of drugs hidden in orders shipped out of Brazil is drawing the attention of the Federal Treasury. Drug traffickers are employing new tactics to try to deceive inspectors.

A children’s mat with fitted parts would have been shipped to Australia. However, the Federal Treasury agents found a white powder, and the reagent cleared up any doubts: positive for cocaine.

The x-ray machine of the Viracopos airport express parcel department also uncovered a suspicious image on a water heater. An aluminum bar was loaded with drugs. Another industrial item contained a kilo of cocaine.

A batch of liquid soap was also loaded with drugs. Traffickers have tried to dispatch drugs in shaving cream and hair cream, cutlery handles and even on checkerboards.

Criminals’ creativity is getting increasingly better. Moreover, the inspectors’ work needs to be thorough. A box seemed like a regular zippered package that would be shipped to Thailand, but when Treasury officials began searching, they found packages containing more than 1.5 kilograms of cocaine.

In the first half of 2019, the number of drugs seized in the express parcel sector of Viracopos increased by 25 percent compared to the same period last year.

Some 1.5 million parcels are dispatched each year at the Campinas airport and identifying where drugs are present is not always an easy task.

Sometimes they are not inside an object; they are part of it. Documents have been printed on a sheet of paper made from cocaine. The blue coloration of the chemical reagent in contact with shirts shows that they were ironed with the drug.

“We imagine that they would dissolve this again, and then decant it, or something similar, to recover the cocaine. We always look for something unusual in shipments, something that wouldn’t be expected”, says João Sirtoli, a Federal Treasury inspector.

“They are always changing their methods, and we need to keep up with these changes. They are dynamic,” says Antônio Andrade Leal, a Federal Treasury official.