Rabat - After Moroccan security services announced that they had seized USD 2.75 billion in a high-profile drug bust, many Moroccan media outlets jumped on the figure, claiming it had been grossly “exaggerated.” But a response by security sources reveals that the media was too quick to judge.
Rabat – After Moroccan security services announced that they had seized USD 2.75 billion in a high-profile drug bust, many Moroccan media outlets jumped on the figure, claiming it had been grossly “exaggerated.” But a response by security sources reveals that the media was too quick to judge.
Journalists questioned whether the astronomical figure might have been exaggerated – deliberately or unwittingly – by the Central Bureau of Judicial Investigations (BCIJ), who dismantled the 15-person network. As Medias24 noted, the amount equals 3 percent of Moroccan GDP.
Online media outlet LeDesk came to this conclusion in its “Fact-Checking” section. Their calculation obeyed to the following reasoning: dividing the total sum of BCIJ’s estimated price (USD 2.7 billion) by the total quantity of grams (2.5 million). According to this calculation, the price of 1 gram would more than USD 1,080, or about MAD 10,000.
In comparison, LeDesk noted that the highest recorded street price of cocaine is USD 330, in Kuwait, while the average price of 1 gram of cocaine in the US is USD 120, but could vary between USD 8 to 300.
Responding to the allegations of “exaggeration,” unnamed sources in the BCIJ told TelQuel that they estimated the cocaine as worth MAD 1,000 (USD 100) per gram, a figure similar to the mentioned by LeDesk. So did the security agency come up with the USD 2.6 billion?
The BCIJ explained that their estimation took into account that the seized merchandize of raw cocaine can grow ten-fold after being processed.
An amount of cocaine can become ten times bigger when cut and mixed with adulterants, like paracetamol, mannitol, and boric acid, with the aim to increase volume and profits.
