Three men in a canoe threw bundles onto the Argentine bank of the Parana at El Frances, a sector of Colonia Mado in Misiones, and fled toward Paraguay when Gendarmeria Nacional officers ordered them to stop.[1] Officers of the Nucleo Section of Gendarmerie Squadron 10 Eldorado, with the Eldorado complex-crimes and judicial-procedures unit, the Eldorado road-safety section and the Iguazu criminal-intelligence unit, were on a motorised patrol along a dirt road toward the Parana riverbank when they saw them.[1] No arrests were reported; the three men escaped across the river into Paraguay.[1]
A search of the area found eight bundles wrapped in black nylon bags and clear tape, holding rectangular packages.[1] Officers counted 150 bricks, which tested positive for marijuana in a field Narcotest and weighed 308 kilos 400 grams.[1] The local newspaper Primera Edicion reported the same count of 150 bricks and a weight of 308.400 kilograms of cannabis sativa, and described the find as more than 300 kilograms.[2] The federal court and federal prosecutor’s office in Eldorado ordered the drug seized, and it was stored in the judicial drug depository.[1]
Primera Edicion reported that the patrol saw the three people in the canoe last Sunday, putting the crossing on Sunday 1 February 2026.[2] The paper said the sector is called El Frances de Mado and is named for the drug-trafficking operations once run from a riverside house there by Slawomir Andrzej Polus, also known as Thierry Andre Polus, a Polish and French citizen convicted in Misiones and expelled to Paraguay in 2016.[2]
