Navy units located and intercepted a boat at the hamlet of Zama in Cumaribo, Vichada.[1][2] Two crew members aboard were captured, a Colombian man and a Venezuelan woman.[1][2] Marine Infantry Brigade No. 5 and Riverine Battalion No. 50 detected the boat in a joint operation with the Army, the Air Force and the National Police.[3] The two detainees were placed at the disposal of the judicial authorities to define their legal situation.[3]

Inspectors found packages with characteristics of illicit substances hidden in a double bottom fitted inside the boat.[1] The boat, its occupants and the seized material were taken to El Coco in Inírida, Guainía, where Technical Investigation Corps officers confirmed through preliminary identification testing that it was marijuana.[1][2] The final weighing gave 728.2 kilograms of marijuana seized by the Navy on the Orinoco River in Vichada.[1][2] The Navy said the operation prevented about 7.6 million dollars in income to drug trafficking groups and the distribution of more than 120,000 doses of marijuana.[1]

Intelligence linked the load presumptively to the illicit finances of residual organized armed group structure 53 Edison Umaña of the Segunda Marquetalia.[1][2] The load was bound first for Venezuela, where trafficking networks would use clandestine airstrips to move it onward to Central America and the United States.[1][2] The Navy said rivers like the Orinoco let illegal groups move loads in hard-to-reach areas near the border.[3]

The interception at Zama was carried out jointly by the Navy, the Army, the Air Force and the National Police, which captured the two crew members.[2]