A worker at the Lidl supermarket discovered a brick of cocaine as he unloaded boxes of fruit at a store in Madrid.
Following the discovery, Police spent an entire weekend searching Lidl stores across the Madrid region where trained drug sniffing dogs discovered at least 25 packages of the class A drug with a combined street value of around £2 million.
According to police, it is believed that up to 100 kgs of the drug were distributed to stores across Madrid and possibly the rest of Spain following an “error” on the part of traffickers.
It is thought that traffickers were supposed to have collected their consignment from the boxes of bananas when they reached port and before they were sent out to supermarkets.
Stashing cocaine in batches of exotic produce has become a favored method of smuggling drugs into Spain.
There is no suggestion the supermarket chain had any knowledge of the illicit shipment of bananas. Lidl has since removed the fruit from sale while police investigated the case.