Wild boar sniff out and destroy stash of cocaine worth £17,000 in Italy

Two million boar are estimated to roam Italy and the country’s largest farmers’ association claims the government has never taken measures to properly control their population.

Related: Wild boar enters shopping mall in Hong Kong (Getty/iStock)

Wild boar in Tuscany are believed to be responsible for destroying a £17,000 stash of cocaine hidden by drug dealers.

The gang discovered that a stash of cocaine they had buried in the woods near Montepulciano had been trampled by a herd of the wild pigs.

Boars managed to rip open the waterproof packages and scatter around the powder around the forest.

The unconventional drug bust came to light when police tapped the telephones of a suspected drug trafficking gang - an Italian and three Albanians – and heard one of the dealers complain about the loss.

Cocaine had been hidden in jars buried in wooded areas and, according to one of the gang members, a boar had stomped the ground where a jar had been buried and damaged the container and its contents.

It is reported by IL Tirreno in Italy that the gang were allegedly selling around 2kg of cocaine every month at bars and nightclubs in and around the city of Arezzo in Tuscany, as well as in nearby Siena.

The four were believed to be active in the area between September 2018 and March 2019 and traded around two kilograms of pure 80-85 per cent cocaine on a monthly basis, charging between 80-100 euros per gram.

All four alleged dealers were arrested and face charges of drug trafficking.

The investigation into the gang’s affairs was launched by Italian authorities after the murder of a 21-year-old Albanian national killed in May 2019.

Two million boar are estimated to roam Italy, double the number in 2015, according to Coldiretti, the country’s largest farmers’ association, which claims the government has never taken measures to properly control their population.​