£20 million of pure cocaine found hidden 30ft underwater in ship’s hull

£20 million of pure cocaine has been found hidden 30ft underwater in a ship’s hull in Italy.

Police officers boarded the cargo vessel after it docked in Ravenna, on the coast of the Adriatic Sea in northern Italy, last week.

Video footage, released on Tuesday (23 April), shows divers finding large silver-coloured packages underwater, lifting them onto a police boat and opening them with knives.

Officers discovered 139 blocks of cocaine in total.

The haul was worth around €5m (£4.3m) wholesale but could have had a street value of about €25m (£21.5m), investigators said.