BERLIN — Staff at a logistics company in Germany threw cocaine with a street value of more than $1 million in the trash, not realizing that the packages they’d found inside banana crates were drugs, customs officials said Tuesday.

Authorities said a fruit logistics company in Erding, near Munich, called police on May 10 to report that workers had discovered almost 10 pounds of cocaine in organic waste bins on their premises.

Police determined the drugs had been dumped there a day earlier by subcontractors who gave no thought to the “foreign objects” they found wrapped in tape inside the banana crates before discarding them.

The Munich customs office said the crates had been shipped from Ecuador via the Netherlands. No further packets of the high-grade cocaine were found.

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Atlanta art and antiques appraiser and auctioneer Allan Baitcher (right) takes bids during a 2020 auction. Baitcher and his company, Peachtree Antiques, are being sued by a Florida multimillionaire who says he paid them $20 million for fakes. (AJC 2020)

Credit: Phil Skinner / Staff