The Merco Press and Crew Center reports that Argentinian Police arrested two Royal Caribbean crew crew members on the Splendour of the Seas cruise ship for trying to smuggle cocaine to sell in Europe. The cruise ship was anchored in the port of Buenos Aires.
The crew members had taped the coke to their bodies. They had also hidden the drugs in a backpack.
The Splendour Of The Seas had arrived in Buenos Aires on last Monday from Punta del Este. it was scheduled to leave for Brazil and then sail to Europe. After the arrest of the two crew members, customs officials searched their cabins and other locations on the ship with 8 narcotics dogs and 20 inspectors and found additional cocaine for a total of 15.8 kilos.
The crew members, who were not identified, were a Croatian and a Chilean traveling on an Australian passport.
The drugs were worth approximately one million euros.
Drug smuggling on cruise ship is big business. So far this year alone, crew members have been busted for smuggling over 43 kilos of cocaine. In January, three cruise passengers were arrested on the Horizon with 20 kilos. Earlier this month, five crew members tried to smuggle 7 kilos drugs on the Norwegian Sun from Roatan to Tampa.
Drug busts on Royal Caribbean ships are common. The company claims that drugs on its ships are "rare," that’s hardly true. 140 pounds of cocaine were found in two drug busts on Royal Caribbean cruise ships (Grandeur and Enchantment) in Jamaica.
Royal Caribbean seems more interested in catching passengers who try to smuggle a bottle of wine aboard, than intercepting large quantities of cocaine smuggled by their own employees.
Read: Cruise line crew members busted yet again.
Photo Credit: Merco Press
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