Spanish authorities have confiscated 11 tonnes of cocaine and arrested 20 people in two different operations against the smuggling of the illegal drugs inside shipping containers, the National Police said this week.
Packed into the containers, the drugs were dispatched from Colombia then passed through Ecuador before being seized by police when they docked at two separate ports in Spain, one in the northwestern city of Vigo and the other in Valencia in the east.
In Vigo, police seized 7.5 tonnes of cocaine concealed within a shipment of frozen tuna in what was the largest-ever seizure in Galicia – a region that has long served as the main gateway for drug shipments from Latin America heading for Europe.
Investigators said that a criminal organisation was using a frozen seafood company as a front to bring the drugs from South America to Spain.
A separate sting by police in Valencia led to the seizure of 3.4 tonnes of cocaine found in false bottoms of shipping containers.
Police didn’t reveal the exact dates of the operation, only indicating that they had been carried out recently.
Of those arrested, most were Albanians but also a Colombian, a Dominican national and several Spaniards, including a Galician businessman who let them use his fishing firm to transport the drugs and whose identity was not revealed.
‘The two operations were not connected, the only thing linking them is we believe both are run by Albanian organisations,’ Antonio Martínez Duarte, head of the police’s drugs and organised crime unit, told reporters in Madrid.
He said the organisations were part of the so-called ‘Balkan cartel’ which has caught the attention of ‘all European police forces’.
‘Albanian mafia groups have for some time been monopolising the shipment of drugs, not only in Europe but also in Latin America,’ he said. ‘These organisations have gone right to the point of origin, they control the shipment from start to finish.’.
Nunca habías visto tanta #droga junta…
— Policía Nacional (@policia) December 12, 2023
Se trata de uno de los golpes más duros contra el #narcotráfico
¡¡¡11 toneladas de #cocaína!!!#SomosTuPolicía https://t.co/DACgQCaKQ3 pic.twitter.com/OJ0FPFygqa
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