Half a tonne of cocaine, with a street value of hundreds of millions of kronor, was stopped at the Swedish border last year, Swedish News SVT reported on Sunday.
Some 90 per cent of all fruit and vegetables shipped to the Nordic countries go through ports. Fruit and vegetable containers leaving South America for the Nordic region are used by smugglers to ship cocaine, usually without the owner of the container being aware.
Instead, the smugglers rely on corrupt staff scattered throughout ports around the world.
"They are the ones who are the eyes and ears of the criminal networks at the harbour in order to be able to carry out the smuggling," Patrik Andersson, head of the police intelligence unit for southern Sweden, told SVT.
Andersson believes criminal networks have infiltrated local fruit wholesalers and also the port of Helsingborg with people ready to handle the logistics of smuggling.
"They monitor the smuggling in the ports and then pick up the cocaine when it reaches the wholesalers," Andersson told SVT.
European law enforcement agency Europol has identified this as a major issue in the fight against drugs.
In recent years, the Swedish Customs Administration has found more and more cocaine on its way to Sweden -- almost half a tonne in 2018 alone.
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