Hungarian authorities have seized a record 522 kilograms of cocaine, originating in South America and routed through Germany, as part of an international operation carried out last autumn, police announced at a press conference on Tuesday.
Record cocaine haul seized in Budapest’s Csepel district
Máté Csupor, head of the Drug Crime Division of the National Bureau of Investigation within the Rapid Response Police, said the street value of the haul is estimated at 15 billion forints.
The cocaine had been concealed within a shipment of bananas dispatched from Ecuador. Hungarian authorities were alerted in November 2025 by French customs officials that a container bound for Hungary was suspected of carrying illicit narcotics, police.hu wrote.
According to Mr Csupor, the containers arrived at the port of Bremen on 17 November before being forwarded days later: six were transported by rail to Hungary, while fourteen were sent by lorry to Romania. Hungarian investigators launched a coordinated, cross-border operation in cooperation with German, Czech and Slovak counterparts, as well as Hungary’s National Tax and Customs Administration (NAV).
Although earlier X-ray inspections revealed no indication of wrongdoing, Hungarian officers persisted. At the port of Csepel, after examining some 7,000 boxes of bananas, they eventually uncovered 438 blocks of cocaine wrapped in foil.
International investigation remains under way
The operation did not end there. A joint task force formed by the National Police Headquarters, NAV and the National Bureau of Investigation subsequently intercepted a further shipment this spring. A container returning from Arad was found to contain 72 kilograms of cocaine, with an estimated street value of 2 billion forints.
Mr Csupor said that an international investigation remains under way to identify and apprehend those responsible. However, given that the operation is linked to South American criminal organisations, arrests are expected to prove particularly complex.
He added that the volume of cocaine trafficked via international container shipping has doubled in recent years. Shipments from Ecuador and Colombia are no longer confined to major ports such as Rotterdam and Antwerp, but are increasingly arriving directly in southern and central Europe.
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X-ray, AI, German help
József Kalecz, deputy head of law enforcement at NAV’s central directorate, said that significant technological upgrades have been introduced to improve detection. These include the establishment of a dedicated X-ray image analysis centre and the deployment of artificial intelligence. He noted that smuggling methods have evolved considerably, making identification more difficult, with illegal consignments now often accompanied by documentation that appears entirely compliant with regulations.
Thomas Rapp, liaison officer for Germany’s Customs Criminal Investigation Service, told the briefing that illicit shipments typically mirror legitimate trade routes. Most narcotics enter Europe by sea before being distributed inland via major ports. Detection remains a formidable challenge: German ports handle millions of containers each year — Hamburg alone processed 7.8 million in 2024. As a result, German authorities rely on risk profiling and targeted inspections to identify suspect consignments.
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