French customs seize record 2.25 tons of cocaine off Martinique

PARIS (Reuters) - French customs officers seized 2.25 tons of cocaine, their biggest ever haul, in a raid on a yacht off Martinique, the Finance Ministry said on Saturday. Officers aboard two coastguard launches intercepted the vessel 200 km (125 miles) off the French Caribbean island on Wednesday and arrested three people, the ministry said in a statement. The wholesale value of the seized drugs was around 100 million euros ($108 million), it added. The haul, which followed a two-year operation conducted jointly with Britain and Spain, amounts to more than one-third of the total of 6.6 tons of cocaine seized by French customs last year. (Reporting by Laurence Frost; editing by John Stonestreet)