More than 2.6 tonnes of cocaine has been seized in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Portugal, Italy’s border and customs police said on Monday.

The drugs, with an estimated street value of €500 million ($570 ⁠million), was ​found ⁠aboard an “ultra-fast ocean-going rigid inflatable boat”, which smugglers typically ⁠use to recover illicit cargoes dropped ​at ⁠sea by large ‌ships arriving from South America, the Guardia di Finanza police said ‌in a statement.

Four people were arrested – two Spaniards, a Gibraltar resident and an ⁠Albanian man living in Italy.

The operation was conducted in cooperation with Spanish and Portuguese authorities, with Italian prosecutors in the northern city of Brescia coordinating investigations.

“The wholesale ‌value of the cocaine is ​estimated at approximately €78 million. Once ‌delivered to ⁠their destination and diluted for retail ⁠distribution, the narcotics could have generated total ‌revenues of ​around €500 million”, ‌the statement said.

Earlier this year Europol celebrated the disruption of a major cocaine trafficking route across the Atlantic Ocean.

Between April 13 and 26 2026, police targeted criminal networks moving cocaine from Latin America to Europe through complex at-sea transfers designed to avoid major ports and traditional detection methods.

During the two-week operational phase, maritime assets were deployed across the Atlantic to detect, track and intercept suspect vessels involved in drug transfers at sea. Law enforcement focused on the eastern Atlantic corridor between the Spanish Canary Islands and the Portuguese Azores.

In total, 11 tonnes of cocaine and 8.5 tonnes of hashish were seized during the operation.

Earlier this year, Europol issued a warning that criminal networks were increasingly shifting cocaine trafficking away from major European ports and towards fragmented maritime routes across the Atlantic Ocean.

Jean-Philippe Lecouffe, Europol’s Deputy Executive Director Operations, said previously:

“Our work proves that when law enforcement acts together, even the Atlantic is not big enough for organised crime to hide.

“Criminal networks are becoming increasingly flexible, and internationally connected. But our response is evolving fast too.

“Over a two-week operational period, law enforcement dealt a significant blow to what is known as the cocaine highway. And our work does not stop with seizures or the arrest of crew members – Europol will now build on the intelligence gathered to help identify and dismantle the criminal networks behind these trans-Atlantic operations.”