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French Coca-Cola workers find smuggled cocaine in shipment

Even though coca leaves haven’t been used in Coca-Cola production since the 1880s, a Pablo Escobar-level shipment of cocaine somehow made its way into a French Coca-Cola factory this week, Bloomberg reports.

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The stash was hidden inside a container of juice that was opened on arrival at the factory in the town of Signes on August 26.

According to media reports, the recovered drug had a street value of up to 50 million euros.

Employees immediately notified police and an investigation into trafficking and importing of illegal drugs has been opened by the Marseille prosecutor’s office.

Meanwhile, Jean-Denis Malgras, the Head of the plant, had described the discovery as a “very nasty surprise”.

The juice shipment contained some 370 kilos (815 pounds) of the drug, a factory spokesman said on Wednesday.

While the Coca-Cola Company officially denies the presence of cocaine in any of its products – past of present – historical evidence suggests that the original Coca-Cola did, in fact, contain cocaine.

In 2015, Jersey men David Romano and Michael Ashford were jailed for a total of 17 years after they were caught trying to smuggle cocaine worth £40m into the UK.

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Around 250kg of cocaine was found on board the the SY Hygeia of Halsa.

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