Helsinki District Court has sentenced two Albanian men in their 30s to prison terms of around eight years for aggravated drug offences.
The court found that the men had been involved in smuggling around 45 kilograms of cocaine into Finland from Ecuador in a shipping container. The haul, which could have fetched 4.5 million euros on the street, was intercepted by Finnish Customs.
After arriving in Finland on 15 September, 2025 and scouting the harbour, the men returned five days later at night in a rowboat they had found nearby.
At the port, they found the shipping container and cocaine, which had been hidden inside the container's refrigeration unit.
According to the men, they had each been promised 10,000 euros in their home country for travelling to Finland, retrieving the drugs, and hiding them in the forest.
Someone else was to take the stash from there.
The district court's verdict can still be appealed.
In a similar case, the district court recently sentenced two Swedish men to nearly eight years in prison. They had received a 44-kilo shipment of cocaine smuggled from Colombia at Vuosaari Harbour last May.
