Spanish media are reporting that on November 15, police in the port of La Coruna arrested three cruise ship passengers who were smuggling 17 kilos of cocaine.

Faro de Vigo says that the police arrested a 50-year-old man and two women, age 28 and 35, all Dutch nationals during the random luggage check. According to Diariodepontevedra the group was using the cruise ship P&O Arcadia to smuggle the cocaine. The vessel was sailing on a repositioning Transatlantic cruise from the Caribbean and La Coruna was the first stop in Europe before Arcadia reached the final destination Southampton.

The suspicious behavior was noticed by the authorities because all three carried sports backpacks with several empty women's bags inside. The agents inspected the bags and found 19 bricks of white substance hidden in the lining of the women's bags. 

The agents verified that the bricks contained narcotic substance cocaine hydrochloride, with a total weight of 17 kilograms. The most common form of cocaine use is cocaine hydrochloride, which is known as cocaine powder, meaning that the cocaine worth more than 1,9 Million Euros was ready for consumption.  

This is second cocaine bust on P&O Arcadia in the last two years. Back in October 2017, a 55-year-old British citizen was arrested in the port of Southampton with 3 kilos of cocaine as he disembarked the cruise liner. He was using a similar Transatlantic repositioning cruise from the Caribbean to Europe. The British National Crime Agency (NCA) said that the passenger collected the drugs in Castries, St Lucia.