Luxury 'Narco-jet' Grounded While Carrying £23.3M Of Cocaine Over Guatemala
A luxury narco-jet carrying over one tonne of cocaine with an estimated street value of £23.3 million has been grounded by authorities in Guatemala.
The jet transporting 1,028 kilos of coke was forced to land after the discovery of its attempted flight to the Mexican Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) - one of the most powerful drug cartels in the world.
A combined operation between the Colombian Attorney General's Office (CAGO) and the US's Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) led to the eventual bust.
The images show armed forces loading barrel-sized packages wrapped in yellow and black tape onto lorries.
Stacked end-to-end, the packages form a never-ending line beside a government aircraft in one photo.
It's reported the drugs were farmed in the Venezuelan border area by Colombia's revolutionary 'People's Army', otherwise known as the FARC.
The FARC then smuggled it north into Central America where it was supposed to be received by alleged members of the CJNG.
The coke had passed through a drug-trafficking complex in the rural region around Colombian-Pacific port city Tumaco.
It was this complex that CAGO and the DEA discovered in June 2021 and prompted the investigation.
In one image a member of the armed forces can be seen tipping a small container of cocaine onto a flat surface to present the substance for the camera.
The Gulfstream III business jet carrying the illicit shipment had taken off from a secret runway in Venezuela when authorities detected it.
The twin-engine jet pictured in one image was then forced to land in the Guatemalan region of Peten.
The CJNG criminal cartel is reportedly headed by a 55-year-old man named Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, otherwise known as 'El Mencho' (The Mind.)
El Mencho is reported to have increased CJNG's presence in in Central and South America with the establishment of criminal routes, improved relations with other criminal groups, and the acquisition of specialised criminal intelligence.
His gang is also known to have increased its purchase and sale of merchandise in different countries.
The chief's arrest is valued at $10 million (£7.3 million) to the DEA website, although an attempt to apprehend him is not advised.
Charlie Metcalfe