“A Saudi prince smuggled a 4,400-pound load of cocaine from Venezuela to Paris on his personal aircraft under diplomatic immunity, U.S. drug investigators charged Wednesday,” The Nando Times reports.

“Nayef bin Sultan bin Fawwaz Al-Shaalan, a prince who prosecutors said is not in the line of succession to the Saudi throne, was indicted along with three others on two drug conspiracy counts.”

Officials said they don’t know the prince’s whereabouts and it is unclear, because of his diplomatic immunity, whether the prince could be prosecuted if he were located.

A woman at the Saudi embassy’s information office in Washington after business hours Wednesday said diplomats were gone for the day and no one was available for comment.

Agents seized a Goya painting, three paintings by Colombia’s Fernando Botero and a sculpture by Japan’s Tsuguharu Foujita as part of the investigation. The DEA estimates the Goya and the Foujita works are worth at least $1 million each.

DEA agents found the alleged broker of the deal, Doris Mangeri Salazar, 44, hiding in a bedroom closet at her home Wednesday, a DEA report said.

A six-page DEA report written to obtain a search warrant for her house briefly outlined the alleged drug deal based primarily on reports from Colombian drug smugglers who have been DEA informants.

Mangeri allegedly introduced the prince to the smugglers in 1998, and he agreed to fly the cocaine from Venezuela to Paris on May 16, 1999, investigators said. Some of the cocaine was distributed and more than 2,000 pounds were seized by French and Spanish authorities, the DEA said.

Ah yes. Blow shit up, and we’ll respond with repeated assurances of friendship and an expedited Visa program for your citizens (while likening detractors of said program to neo-Nazis).

But snort some blow…well, now you’re just pissing us off…

[via The Corner]