Smugglers impregnated cardboard with cocaine - Edwin Congo

Spanish police have busted an international gang that smuggled cocaine into Europe from Colombia by impregnating it into cardboard boxes. The boxes were then used for legal shipments of pineapples and limes from Colombia. Among the 18 busted is former Real Madrid player Edwin Congo, 43.

Congo signed for £4.3m in 1999 and bizarrely he never played an official game for the Spanish giants.

“Small quantities of the drug – never more than 100g – were placed in each box and later extracted by chemicals in the gang’s laboratories” Spanish cops said. In January they got wind of a shipment bound for Greece: 5,016 boxes of limes and 1,660 boxes of pineapples.

Colombian kingpins sought help from Spanish cartel Los Castanitas for logistical success of their operation. Over 1 tonne of cocaine was seized along with more than 1.2 tonnes of compressed cardboard and 1,000 litres of chemicals used to extract the cocaine.