Rio de Janeiro, Nov 24 (EFE).- Brazil's Federal Highway Police seized 24.5 tons of marijuana in a truck that evidently entered the country from Paraguay, a record drug seizure for the institution, authorities reported Tuesday.
To date, the largest seizure of pot made by the Highway Police had been 21.5 tons in 2010, and the total amount seized so far in 2015 had been 4.5 tons, the institution said in a communique.
The shipment was intercepted on Monday afternoon on a highway in the southern state of Parana, which borders on Argentina and Paraguay, but the size of the haul was only determined on Tuesday after authorities weighed it.
The pot was hidden among sacks of corn in the trailer of a truck that was searched at a police checkpoint on federal highway BR-487, near Alto Paraiso, a town in northwestern Parana.
The truck driver presented a cargo manifest claiming that the vehicle was transporting a load of soybeans, but when police found that the cargo was corn they decided to use drug-sniffing dogs to check if drugs were also on board.
The driver, who was arrested, admitted that he knew about the marijuana and said he had picked up the load in Amambai, a town in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul on the border with Paraguay.