Cocaine seized after flight from Caribbean arrives at Toronto Pearson Airport; traveller arrested

A traveller was arrested and turned over to the RCMP after customs officers recently seized more than 15 kilograms of cocaine at Toronto Pearson Airport in Mississauga.

The drugs were found hidden inside the luggage of a passenger who’d arrived at Canada’s biggest and busiest airport on a flight from Saint Vincent and the Grenadines in the Caribbean, the Canada Border Services Agency said on Wednesday.

CBSA officers discovered the drugs, which were subsequently turned over to the Mounties. The traveller was also arrested and placed in the custody of the RCMP.

The agency didn’t say on what date the flight arrived at Pearson from the Caribbean nation.

The recent seizure is the latest in a number of similar busts at the airport in which drugs, on most occasions cocaine, were found hidden inside luggage that had arrived along with travellers from the Caribbean.

In March, Canada border services officers said they had seized a significant amount of cocaine in two recent busts at Toronto Pearson.

Officers found more than 100 kilograms of suspected cocaine hidden inside pieces of luggage that had arrived on two separate flights from Jamaica.

The agency didn’t say on what dates those flights arrived, nor did it say if any arrests were made.

The CBSA did say the drugs, potentially worth an estimated millions of dollars, were turned over to the RCMP and that the investigation is ongoing.

While the federal agency didn’t reveal the estimated street value of the seized drugs, 100 kilograms of cocaine might draw a return on the street of anywhere from a few million dollars to $10 million or more (based on previous drug busts).

“Street prices for illegal drugs are sensitive to factors such as their purity, how they are cut and sold, and fluctuating levels of local supply and demand,” a CBSA spokesperson told INsauga.com in an earlier email. “It is difficult to quantify street price estimates as there is no one formula that can account for all variables at any point in time. For this reason, the CBSA does not communicate street values for its controlled drugs and substances seizures unless they have been methodically validated for specific legal proceedings.”