A FORMER international soccer player has been detained as part of a gang that was attempting to export cocaine from Costa Rica to Donegal.
Police in Costa Rica arrested 40-year-old Andy Furtado Dixon and five others on Monday.
The gang was believed to be attempting to export the shipments to Donegal disguised as banana pulp.
Dixon, who was capped nine times by Costa Rica, has worked at the port terminal in Limon for the last six years. He was part of a group of six arrested on Monday as they were attempting to export cocaine hydrochloride that was destined for Donegal.
Dixon and Rojas Villalobos, Camacho Jara, Montoya Ortiz, Cubero Rodríguez and Mora Monge will go before Limón Criminal Court.
The Limón Deputy Prosecutor’s Office believes the substances were introduced into containers processed via APM Terminals.
Authorities say they took ‘advantage of the fact that some of the suspects work in the port terminal and could thus evade controls’.
The Drug Control Police (PCD) carried out 15 raids on Tuesday to dismantle both criminal groups that are linked to a total shipment of almost five tons of cocaine to Europe.
The drugs were valued at almost €10,000.
According to the Caribbean Prosecutor’s Office, they would have participated in an operation between Thursday 18 and Sunday 21 of March when they allegedly managed to put 3,466 kilos of cocaine in the port terminal in a container that carried banana pulp to Donegal.
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