The discovery was made at dawn in the state of Minas Geraisin the southeast of the country, when the highway police searched the truck that was traveling to the port city of Salvador de Bahía.
“Thanks to the sniffer dogs, the agents found around 1,140 kilos of cocaine in bags hidden under a shipment of kitty litter,” the Federal Transit Police (PRF) said in a statement.
The seizure was valued at around $39 million, it added.
Brazil is one of the hubs of international drug traffickingreceiving shipments by land or river from cocaine-producing countries such as Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, which are then sent to Europe or Africa on ships that depart from important ports such as Santos or Salvador de Bahía.
In June, a man named Sergio Roberto de Carvalho, known as “the Pablo Escobar of Brazil”, was arrested in Hungary.
De Carvalho, suspected of running a major drug trafficking organization that supplies cocaine to Europe, had been on the run since 2020.
