By Shaun Murphy-
A former heavyweight boxer has been charged by the US Department of Justice with trafficking 22 tonnes of cocaine worth over $1bn (£870m), most of which was part of one of the largest cocaine seizures in American history.
Goran Gogic, from Montenegro, was arrested on Sunday night while trying to board a flight to Zurich from Miami International Airport, after being indicted by a grand jury in New York.
Prosecutors charged Gogic with one count of conspiracy to violate the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act and three counts of violating the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act, according to court documents. If convicted, he faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in prison, with an upper threshold of life in prison, the DOJ said.
He was detained after appearing in federal court in Miami on Monday and that the charges came as a surprise to his client, adding that Gogic maintains his innocence, and he had come to the United States for a boxing convention in Puerto Rico.
Hashish added that Gogic has a detention hearing set for November 7 in Miami federal court, but the date is subject to change as Gogic is currently in quarantine in the detention center
Breon Peace, US attorney for the Eastern District of New York, described the quantities of cocaine that Gogic and his co-conspirators allegedly tried to move as “staggering” and noted that it was more than 20 tons
The charges stem from the seizures of 19,930kg (22 tonnes) of cocaine from three commercial cargo ships in 2019,
including 17,956kg (19.8 tonnes) from the MSC Gayane while it was docked at Philadelphia’s Packer Avenue Marine Terminal.
Prosecutors said the conspirators transported cocaine to Europe from Colombia through American ports, using cranes and nets at night to hoist drugs on to cargo ships from approaching speedboats along the ships’ routes.
The complex operation required knowledge of each ship’s crew, route and location data, and that there was room to store