16 kilogram cocaine mistakenly sent to UN headquarters

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A 16 kilo (35.5 pounds) consignment of cocaine that Mexican drug traffickers recently lost has turned up in an unlikely place - the United Nations in New York.

Police and UN officials on Thursday described how two fake UN bags containing the drugs - which experts said had a street value of about $2 million - set off a security alert when they were delivered, apparently by accident, to the the global body's headquarters.

The bags, which had the UN symbol printed on them, were shipped from Mexico through the DHL delivery company's center in Cincinnati, Ohio, Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne of the New York Police Department told the media.

But the bags had no address on them, nor any return to sender details.

"It is my understanding that because there was no addressee, the DHL just thought well that's the UN symbol so we should ship it on to UN headquarters and let them figure out who it was supposed to go to," Browne said.

But the two UN bags were 'obvious fakes' and were quickly intercepted by security staff when they arrived on January 16. The bags contained about 14 hard cover books which had been hollowed to create space for the cocaine.

"The working theory now is that possibly it was never meant to have left Mexico at all," the deputy commissioner said, adding that the bags were 'a bad fake'.

"Somebody in Mexico is probably in trouble now having let a significant amount of cocaine out of their possession," he added.

UN assistant secretary general Gregory Starr told reporters there was no evidence that anyone from the United Nations was linked to the bags.

"In my humble opinion this was the work of narcotics traffickers that were trying to ship something into the United States and their plan must have gone wrong," said Starr, who is in charge of UN security.