In the biggest cocaine bust at the Ambassador Bridge in more than two years, Canada Border Services Agency officers have seized 78 kilograms of the drug worth $9.8 million hidden in a tractor-trailer load of oranges.
“It’s one of our larger amounts, the latest in a series of significant seizures,” Teri Mailloux, spokeswoman for the CBSA’s Windsor St. Clair region, said Monday.
Baldev Singh, 40, of Maple, Ont., is charged under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act with importation of a controlled substance and possession of a controlled substance for the purpose of trafficking. Currently behind bars at Windsor Jail, his next court appearance is March 27.
Mailloux said the truck, loaded with oranges and destined for Toronto, entered Canada at about 9:20 a.m. March 19 and that the cocaine was found as the result of a routine examination. Officers discovered 69 bricks of cocaine inside two orange crates.
Mailloux said there have been a number of large seizures at Windsor and Sarnia crossings over the past two years. A commercial tractor-trailer was found hauling 234 kilograms of cocaine at the Blue Water Bridge crossing a year ago last month, while another rig that crossed the Ambassador Bridge in February 2007 was smuggling 172 kilograms of cocaine.
In the Windsor-St. Clair region alone, the CBSA intercepted 456 kilograms of cocaine in 2007 and 310 kilograms in 2008.
Source: The Windsor Star
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