Cocaine Cruisers

A British cruise couple are in court in Lisbon this week accused of smuggling £1m of cocaine say they had ‘no idea’ about the drugs when they were arrested on December 4 last year on board the Cruise & Maritime Marco Polo.

Roger Clarke, 72, and wife Sue, 71, are on trial in Portugal after police raided their cabin on a luxury cruise and insisted that they had no idea nine kilos of cocaine were hidden in the linings of four suitcases he agreed to pick up on the paradise island of St Lucia.

This is not a one off incident, there have been many high profile reports of passengers and crew using the disguise of cruising to smuggle millions of pounds of drugs

12 people were held after a cruise ship raid on £2m of cocaine in crisp packets in March this year including a British couple who were arrested on suspicion of smuggling cocaine on board cruise liner  MSC Opera, docked at Funchal en route from the Caribbean on March 24. The cocaine had been hidden in crisp packets and ceramic bowls which had been stashed in suitcases.

Six of those arrested had been passengers on board the vessel when it travelled from the West Indies to Madeira.

The other six, including the two Britons, and a Dutch national who lives in London, had  recently travelled to Madeira, where it is suspected they were due to meet the ship when it docked.

In 2016 3 Norwegian Dawn crew members were arrested at New Orleans Riverwalk shopping mall for smuggling 4.75 kilograms of cocaine. … The crew later admitted to the police that they had picked up the cocaine in Roatan, Honduras and smuggled the drugs aboard the ship in their Spandex underwear

Cruise passengers Arrested Reportedly Trying to Smuggle Drugs onto Allure of the Seas for Atlantis Cruise in February this year

The local news station reported that after both men arrived at the port, a drug sniffing canine alerted its handler to their luggage which contained MDMA (ecstasy), ketamine, Viagra, Adderall and GHB.

At least six others were involved in another smuggling operation, a police summary of the plot explained. It was driven by two unnamed French nationals, who recruited others to carry cocaine on cruise ships from South America to Australia.

A member of an international cocaine smuggling ring whose members used cruise ship passengers to transports millions of dollars of drugs from South America to Australia has been convicted by a New Zealand court.

Four people were sent on the Astor cruise ship, heading to Sydney and due to dock at the end of November 2017. The two Frenchmen then themselves went aboard the Regatta, which was due to travel from the U.S. via South America and New Zealand, before eventually also arriving in Sydney, one week after the Astor. All involved were arrested The Australian authorites have been successful drug busts on cruise ships entering Sydney ports and last year alone seized 95 kilos of cocaine that 3 passengers smuggled n board Sea Princess