ROME, July 22 -- When inspectors opened a container shipped from South America and packed with bananas, what they found beneath the produce was powder: approximately $285 million worth of cocaine concealed inside a shipment that had crossed the Atlantic presenting itself as groceries.

Italian authorities seized the cocaine in an operation reported by CBS News on July 21, describing one of the largest drug busts recorded in Italy. The shipment had arrived at an Italian port, part of a trafficking route used by organized crime networks to move South American cocaine into European markets by exploiting commercial cargo flows at a scale and frequency that inspection systems cannot fully cover.

Italy has become a primary European entry point...