133 kg of cannabis seized from a tapouille off Le Prêcheur; five held
French customs coastguards and OCRTIS police intercepted a Saint Vincent fishing boat about 25 km north-west of Le Prêcheur, Martinique, on 6 April 2016 and recovered about twenty bales of cannabis herb weighing 133 kg after the crew threw them overboard. The five passengers, nationals of Saint Vincent, Grenada and Dominica, were placed in police custody in Fort-de-France.
🇫🇷 About 25 km north-west of Le Prêcheur, Martinique · France
French customs coastguards and OCRTIS Caribbean officers stopped a tapouille, a
local fishing boat, about 25 km north-west of Le Prêcheur in Martinique on 6
April 2016.[1]The boat had left Saint Vincent and was suspected of carrying a
large consignment of cannabis herb for the Antillean market.[1]The OCRTIS
Caribbean branch organised the operation under the Action de l’État en Mer, with
the police services of Saint Vincent and Saint Lucia and Britain’s National
Crime Agency.[1]
An aircraft of the regional coastguard directorate located the boat, then the
Pointe-à-Pitre coastguard patrol boat Pitera, the two rigid inflatables Tarpon
and Macouba from Le Marin and Fort-de-France, and the helicopter Racam made the
interception.[1]The five people on board threw bales of the drug into the sea
as the coastguards approached.[1]Officers recovered about twenty bales of
cannabis herb weighing 133 kg in total.[1]
The five people on board, nationals of Saint Vincent, Grenada and Dominica, were
placed in police custody in Fort-de-France.[1]Their custody could last up to
96 hours and the judicial investigation, followed by the specialised
interregional court, was entrusted to the OCRTIS Caribbean branch based in
Fort-de-France.[1]La 1ère’s account confirms that the recovered packages
contained cannabis herb.[2]
Case data
Every number and detail the sources state, with the sources that state it.
RCI's body text dates the seizure to Wednesday 6 April 2015, but its own lede, the La 1ère, ZayActu and France-Antilles accounts give 6 April 2016, which is used here.
No street value was published in the opened French-language accounts; Le Marin's weekly report put a figure on the haul but its page could not be opened.
No charges, trial date or court outcome for the five detainees was reported in these accounts.
RCI's page images are a generic RCI illustration and unrelated recent-photo thumbnails, so none is linked as media.
Left out, as its quotation was not found in ZayActu: The operation was coordinated by the OCRTIS Caribbean branch and relied on the area's anti-narcotics enforcement and intelligence services and the customs air-and-sea deployment.
Customs officers seized 40 kg of cannabis products from a Spanish UPS truck at the Fontaine toll on the A36 on 9 November 2026. Two Spain-based delivery drivers, aged 36 and 46, were detained after admitting they acted as “mules” for a load collected in Madrid.
Police seized about 100 kilos of drugs, mainly cannabis with some cocaine, from a nourrice stash flat supplying deal points in Vénissieux's Joliot-Curie sector. The reports give only a combined weight, so no cannabis-only quantity can be recorded.
Six people were taken into custody after searches across Corrèze and Saône-et-Loire linked to the Kannathera CBD chain; police seized 444.1 kg of cannabis, 190.2 kg of it resin. The Brive prosecutor's office said four suspects were placed under judicial supervision pending trial and two others were summoned to court.
On 3 November 2026 a Paris court ended a mother's social-housing lease after several kilos of cannabis and cash were found in her son's bedroom, put at 6.5 kg. The court accepted she paid rent, had no neighbour complaints and knew nothing of her son's activity.
