Spanish
Guayaquil, Ecuador.- An Ecuadorian judge sent a woman to preventive prison after the Police found 249 kilos of cocaine hidden in the vehicle she was driving, in the province of Carchi, bordering Colombia, the Prosecutor's Office reported this Tuesday.
The woman, identified as Katherine C., was arrested on Sunday while driving through the municipality of Tulcán, capital of Carchi. Police officers detected that she tried to evade the control, so they decided to search the vehicle.
The uniformed officers found an unusual modification in the metallic structure of the car's body, specifically under the rear seats, which suggested the existence of a hidden compartment. It was then that they discovered a stash with 249 rectangular packages covered with a red plastic tape.
After testing the substance in the packages, the Police confirmed that it was cocaine hydrochloride.
In addition to imprisonment, the judge also prohibited him from disposing of assets and ordered the retention of the money he had in his bank accounts.
In the first half of the year, around 105 tons of drugs were seized in the Andean country, mostly cocaine, according to official figures.
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Ecuador is considered the third country in the world that seizes the most drugs, after Colombia and the United States, with 200 tons annually since 2021 and a historical record of nearly 300 tons in 2024. Surrounded by Colombia and Peru, the two largest global producers of cocaine, and with several ports on its coasts, such as Guayaquil, and a dollarized economy, Ecuador has become in recent years an important passage for the trafficking of that drug that is mostly directed to Europe and North America.
