SANTO DOMINGO.- United States agents helped by Dominican authorities seized 4,250 pounds of cocaine on the high seas, transported on board a boat loaded in a South American country.

National Control Drugs (DNCD) president Gilberto Delgado last night said the ship weighed anchor September 17, after remaining for months in Santo Domingo Port without any cargo, which prompted its surveillance.

In a statement, the official said his agents collaborated with the U.S. Coastguard and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in the interdiction September 18  of the Panama-registry boat on the high seas and forced it to sail to Puerto Rico territorial waters, where the drug was seized and the crew of 10 placed under arrest for drug trafficking.

Though the ship changed its name several times, Delgado said DNCD agents continued the surveillance, first during the several months it was docked in Santo Domingo, and afterwards during its trips to South America, until it loaded the cocaine. It was then, he added, when the U.S. agencies were alerted on the ship’s cargo.

The DNCD added that the crewmen are Spanish, Nicaraguan, Ecuadorian, Costa Rican and Indian.