The cocaine was smuggled inside a gold duck statue
(Picture: National Crime Agency)A man has admitted to smuggling cocaine into the UK with a gold duck statue.
National Crime Agency officers launched a probe last month after the Border Force at Stansted Airport x-rayed a suspicious wooden box containing the statue that had arrived on a flight from Cali in Colombia.
When officers drilled holes into it, a pink sticky substance leaked out - which tested positive for cocaine.
The substance was found laced within the entire material of the duck, and would have been broken down into the powdered version of the Class A drug.
Police tracked the cocaine-laced statue to the address of Aldo Alushi, 29, in Harlow, Essex, where they arrested him.
Alushi, originally from Albania, had been living illegally in the UK.
A search of his rented bedroom in the town’s Millwards turned up five mobiles and a variety of identity documents under different names.
The 29-year-old originally told police the statue did not belong to him and that he had received it on behalf of another Albanian man who had helped him get into the UK.
On February 18 at Chelmsford Crown Court, Alushi confessed to importing drugs into the UK. He will be sentenced on March 11.
Lydia Bloomfield, Branch Commander at the NCA, said: “This is certainly one of the most unusual attempts to smuggle drugs we’ve seen, and it shows the lengths that organised crime groups are willing to go in an attempt to avoid detection.
“The cocaine trade fuels significant further criminality, most notably serious violence, both upstream where the drug is sourced and here on the streets of the UK.”
Martin Hendy, Deputy Director of Border Force for Central Region, said: “Drug supply chains are violent and exploitative, degrading neighbourhoods across our country.”
He added that those involved in the successful operation to stop the drug shipment “can be proud of their work”.
