A 67-year-old Nigerian-British grandmother was arrested at Lagos’s Murtala Muhammed International Airport after officers discovered 13 kilograms of cocaine concealed inside hollowed-out plantain peels in her luggage, Nigerian anti-narcotics authorities said. The woman, who works as a caregiver in the United Kingdom, was attempting to board a Virgin Atlantic flight to London on 28 June when a search of her bags revealed 31 wraps of the drug packaged to resemble hands of plantain. She admitted ownership of the cocaine, according to the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA).

In a separate operation, the NDLEA said it had dismantled a syndicate led by a 45-year-old PhD student at Malaysia’s University of Putra, arrested in Anambra State after 5.8 kilograms of cocaine were found hidden in the walls of cartons of Orijin bitters destined for Kuala Lumpur. Four other suspects were detained in Lagos. The agency also reported the seizure of 43,980 capsules of tramadol from a vehicle’s modified fuel tanks in Taraba State, and the arrest of a 75-year-old man with 15 kilograms of cannabis in Plateau State.

Across Latin America, Mexican naval personnel intercepted two small vessels off the coast of Oaxaca, seizing approximately 2.99 tonnes of cocaine and detaining four people, the Secretariat of the Navy said. In northern Argentina, gendarmes in Tucumán province found nearly 27 kilograms of cocaine hidden in a false-bottom compartment of a car during a routine highway check; a sniffer dog alerted officers to the concealment. Brazilian highway police in São Paulo state recovered 42.9 kilograms of cocaine from a hidden roof compartment of a van, arresting the driver, while military police in São José dos Campos detained a man with 2,600 individual portions of drugs including cocaine, crack and LSD.

In Hong Kong, police raided a warehouse in Yuen Long and seized 172 bricks of suspected cocaine weighing about one kilogram each, concealed inside three heavy metal containers designed to block X-ray scanning. Three Pakistani nationals were arrested. Brazilian authorities in Cabo Frio, meanwhile, reported finding a large drug cache in a wooded area with an estimated street value of 100,000 reais, and separately recovered a stolen motorcycle within hours of deploying a new national database system that allows real-time vehicle checks.

All operations remain under investigation, with suspects facing charges ranging from drug trafficking to contraband. No further details on the networks behind the shipments have been released.