Benin: The Anracs destroyed 95 kg of cocaine and significant quantities of narcotics in Ouidah.

Among the products reduced to ashes were 95 kilograms of cocaine intercepted a month earlier at the Autonomous Port of Cotonou. The operation, executed at the site of the Waste Management and Sanitation Company (SGDS), took place under the strict control of the judicial authorities, in the presence of magistrates, senior representatives from the Ministry of Justice, as well as detachments from the Republican Police and the Beninese Armed Forces.

A major seaport seizure definitively neutralized

According to Raynier Florent Gnansomon, Director General of Anracs, these illicit substances come from various operations carried out as part of the national policy against drug trafficking networks.

The most significant portion of this incineration involved the 95 kilograms of pure cocaine. This shipment had been intercepted in mid-May 2026 at the Autonomous Port of Cotonou during a targeted surveillance operation by the Special Unit of River and Maritime Police (USPFM). Elite agents discovered five bales of drugs cleverly concealed in the mesh of a foreign-flagged container ship, before handing the case over to the Central Office for Combating the Illicit Trafficking of Drugs and Precursors (Ocertid) for in-depth investigation.

Cannabis and psychotropics also incinerated

In addition to cocaine, Anracs has destroyed large stocks of cannabis and a significant amount of psychotropic products seized during recent judicial procedures.

The agency emphasized that this systematic destruction aims at a double objective: to strictly enforce court decisions and to eliminate any risk of reintroduction or leak of these dangerous products into local or international criminal circuits.

A high-security regulatory device

The transport, securing of the Ahozon site, and monitoring of the combustion process were entrusted to an impressive mixed device of military personnel and police.

“Their destruction is one of our prerogatives,” emphasized Raynier Florent Gnansomon. He pointed out that Anracs thus fulfills its legal mission of managing and liquidating assets seized in the context of transnational crime. By definitively removing these toxic products from judicial seals to be consumed, it marks the end of several dismantling procedures of mafia networks in Benin.