That single cocaine flight carried 39,311 times the 30g limit for a mandatory death sentence in Singapore!

I fully agree with previous posters who have stated it makes a mockery of security. That aside I wonder what the risks to passengers would have been if a bag burst in the hold or imagine trying to explain how your baggage has tested positive for a routine spray test for cocaine by border security and that you're not involved in drug trafficking.

It's quite simple really and boils down to corruption. Forget about western-style security! Yesterday another five more National Guards were arrested in Caracas. One of them is a Lieutenant-Colonel.

The proceeds of one successful flight are enough to pay off hundreds of people in Caracas. And, of course, you pay the Big Chief more than the Indians.

Do you think it stops at Lieutenant-Colonel level?

And, as I've said before, the usual rules don't apply when an army guy gives you 500 euros and tells you he knows where your family live.

I'm being a bit thick I think. Just can't understand the mechanisms used by the French Police.

European Police worked together. No mention of a Venezuelan contact.

Taking that at face value suggests that the package was found at some point during unloading the hold and the trip to the carousel. Is a name check done during that time? Seems unlikely. Sniffer/X-ray after unloading? Not routine surely?

Given that some sleight of hand must have been used at the departure, then a tip-off seems to be the only way to detect this. And thank goodness. In this case.

But if it's that easy, how many are not tipped-off? Terrifying.

May I suggest you read Angels' post carefully? That should tell you why, if there was one, no Venezuelan contact is mentioned. No Customs/Other Agency is going to risk the life of an important contact.

Ah, yes.

Angels posted while I was typing. I fully agree with you dx. There is a very brave man out there and I wish him all the luck in the world.

"enhance our checks of baggage and goods on departure from certain sensitive destinations"

Hardly reassuring!

If they got as far as they did with this shipment, they have clearly done it before. Finding out which are the 'sensitive destinations' to avoid, will be a breeze. One must admire their abilities to know the weak links.

Yes definitely a quantity 'not to be sniffed at'.

I wonder how much will be "required" for lab tests, prosecution examples or will just amazingly evaporate into thin air from the police locker they keep it in...............

I'm not surprised about the Caracas end of things, but there must have been quite a set-up in Paris as well. The loaders would have to be in on it, because the bags wouldn't have made it to the carousel. Considering that the loading team is probably allocated at random as an aircraft arrives, it must have involved a lot of people.Then you have the problem of driving a baggage truck, with bags on, to some remote part of the airfield without anyone noticing, transferring the bags to another vehicle, and getting away from the airport.

Redundant security?
 

I'd expect the pros who do this have a VERY strong interest in business as usual and are taking huge precautions to prevent anyone else piggybacking on "their" route and messing it up. At this point nothing would be worse news to the cartels than somebody messing up "their" plane and a real post-incident investigation by "real" law enforcement ... by "real" I mean different from the high-up on the receiving end who are partners in this setup.

Let's face it, $200M loss is the sort of money that an airline would pay in damages to european passengers in a pilot-error accident - so the cartels probably have safety procedures equivalent to those of airline maintenance, equivalent security, and equivalent airport costs :)

I seem to remember a similar story in BA several years ago when drugs were found on several of our South American flights. If I remember correctly, on the next flight they found a hand grenade. I understand that it had been left as a warning not to interfere in their business. It all seemed to go quiet after that....

And make the gummint concerned reappraise the economic benifits of turning a blind eye to the trade.

maybe the way forward, but not a quick-fix.

Nice Freudian slip there, cs!

Could that be a whole LD3 container switched ( or re-placarded)?

Forget about carousels, last news are suitcases were containerised as freight:

Extract (my translation):
Source: Saisie record de cocaïne : un responsable d'Air France à Caracas arrêté

Like Air America , "Anything, Anywhere, Anytime, Professionally" ,
Gold bars worth £1.35m stolen on Air France flight to Zurich from Paris - Telegraph

And meanwhile in the USA



Federal agents conducted dozens of income-generating tobacco sting operations without approval during the last seven years and misplaced more than 2 million cartons of cigarettes, according to a report released by the U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday.


Despite the lack of required prior approval, churning investigations are allowed under statutory authority, according to the report, and are conducted to generate funding from illegal transactions to pay for expenses incurred during the investigations.
More than 2.1 million cartons, containing 420 million cigarettes, purchased during at least 20 separate ATF sting operations, are missing, according to the audit. The estimated retail value of the cigarettes is $127 million, according to the report.


ATF disputes the numbers in the inspector general's audit, an agency spokeswoman said. "The OIG report inaccurately implies ATF cannot account for 2.1 million cartons of cigarettes or that the cigarettes are missing," Colbrun said in an email.


The ATF did a reconstructive inventory that showed 447,218 cartons were not accounted for because of "insufficient documentation," Colbrun said.
The black market value, which the cigarettes were sold at during the sting operations, is estimated at $7.2 million, according to the ATF.

According to a UN report I dug up, at 2010 prices in France, 1.3 metric tonnes is somewhere in the range of US$104 Million.

Someone mentioned that this might have been a rouse to keep them from finding a much larger shipment--I doubt they'd lose $100 million on something like that.

And, $104 Million goes a long way to pay off all the people it would take to pull this off.