Don’t worry, the U.N. has plenty of cocaine

30 pounds of it to be exact.

I don’t know the minutia of what goes on at the U.N. headquarters in New York, but I imagine hundreds of ambassadors and diplomats in suits buzzing through long corridors on their way to doing important tasks that I only have vague descriptions for. Like attending meetings with foreign dignitaries, reading the latest data on world hunger, making long distance phone calls and coming to resolutions. I may be naive, but I don’t imagine a lot of dinking around or much Facebook checking, napping or Ebay bidding.

But every now and then, surely something amusing and totally out of the ordinary does occur. One of these events reportedly happened last week. Bloomberg reports:

Two forged diplomatic pouches containing a total of 35 pounds (16 kilos) of cocaine were delivered last week to the UN headquarters building in New York, according to a UN official speaking on condition of anonymity.

The packages, delivered to the mail room, were singled out Jan. 16 by security staff during a scan, according to the official, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

Apparently the packages were sent directly from Mexico City with no specified recipient, no address and no airway bill, but rather “badly forged UN logos” which were presumably intended to help the packages get over the border. They were sent using DHL, naturally, and according to the source the bags contained hollowed out notebooks stuffed with blocks of cocaine.

It’s hard to imagine what the plan was back in Mexico. Even if fake U.N. stickers are enough to get a bunch of coke over the boarder, who was supposed to receive the package and where were they supposed to pick it up? Is there a mail graveyard somewhere where unmarked packages are sent, and was someone to be paid to break in and search through the piles? Is there a drug trafficker working in the U.N. mailroom? Both seem unlikely, the first option more than the second. But it makes one wonder what other stories U.N. security have collected over the years.