An inspection of a police warehouse for impounded drugs in Pilar, Argentina, confirmed that 540kg of marijuana was missing - part of a 6,000kg haul that had been sitting there for two years.

Former police commissioner Javier Specia had left the inventory for the impounded marijuana unsigned when he left his post in April 2017.

Asked to account for the missing drugs, Specia and three of his subordinates all claimed it had been “eaten by mice”.

Experts have cast doubt onto the credibility of the explanation and a serious investigation is now under way in the Argentinian town.

The case is being dealt with by Judge Adrián González Charvay, who is seeking to establish whether the marijuana went missing as a result of “expedience of negligence”, The Guardian reports.