Prosecutors and local media in Uruguay said that the police seized a record amount of cocaine with a market value of more than a billion dollars.
The police intercepted about 4.4 tons of drugs at the port of the capital Montevideo, while another ton was found on a farm in the Soriano administration.
On Friday, the Public Prosecutor´s Office said this represented the largest cocaine ever seized in Uruguay.
According to media reports, the drug market value is more than one billion dollars.
The police arrested four suspects, including the farm owner. Initial investigations stated that the plan was to hide cocaine in containers with soybeans and to smuggle them to Lome in Togo.
Uruguay is an important transit country in the international trade in illegal drugs, which is often smuggled into Europe via West Africa.
Montevideo recently stepped up efforts to arrest drug traffickers after investigators failed to monitor a cocaine shipment of 4.5 tons. The drugs were only discovered when they arrived in the port of Hamburg, Germany, last July.
Last November, investigators seized more than three tons of cocaine bound for the Cotonou port in Benin.
