[imagesource:youtube/vicenews]

Colombian authorities discovered a homemade narco submarine floating off their pacific coast, which turned out to have two tons of cocaine worth over R1 billion, as well as two dead bodies.

VICE reports the amount of cocaine as being worth $87 million in the article – which is close to R1,5 billion – whereas the video notes the amount as $69 million – which is R1,2 billion.

Either way, that’s a fok ton of white powder to carry from one coast to another in a shoddy 15-meter-long homemade sub.

But that’s business as usual for the drug trafficking cartels.

The sub was allegedly bound for Central America, one of the more important corridors for transporting cocaine north toward the United States.

To top the illicit cherry on top, the Colombian Marines discovered two dead bodies when they boarded the sub, along with two other men who were essentially in the process of dying.

The two other men were apparently alive but suffering from the effects of poisonous gasses generated by the boat’s fuel, which may or may not have killed the other two dead bodies found inside:

Video from the seizure provided by the Colombian government showed one unconscious man being removed on a stretcher and carried towards what looks like a parked ambulance. Authorities said both sick men were transported to Tumaco on the Colombian Pacific coast.

You can see soldiers pulling packages of cocaine out of the sub’s flooded hull:

Based on the footage, it doesn’t seem like there was much of a chase, so it is possible that the sub was idling in the open sea before it was discovered by the authorities:

Increasingly-sophisticated narco subs like this are a popular method used by Colombian drug traffickers for moving cocaine out of their areas of dominance toward trafficking partners in Central America and Mexico. Cartel operatives build the subs from boats or their parts, waterproof them and install engines inside. Their submersible nature makes it harder for radar systems to detect them.

FYI, this video breaks down all the types of narco subs:

A number of drug trafficking networks operate in Colombia, including the powerful Gulf Clan, and these criminal organisations do the utmost to nurture the skillset of those building such vessels within their ranks.

[source:vice]