Spain busts cocaine trafficking operation that used ‘floating bases’ at sea
Spain seizes 10 tonnes of drugs and arrests 105 suspects, while Portugal intercepts a record haul from a ‘narco-sub’
Spanish police have broken up a vast cocaine trafficking operation that used speed boats to bring the drug onshore from floating bases in the Atlantic, seizing around 10 tonnes of the drug and arresting 105 suspects.
Police said on Monday that a year-long investigation in cooperation with law enforcement in countries including Cabo Verde, formerly known as Cape Verde, Colombia, France, Portugal and the US showed the group brought an estimated 57 tonnes of cocaine to Europe in the period.
Speed boats - operating at night from rivers in southern Spain, the northwestern Galicia region and the Canary Islands, as well as from Portugal and Morocco - navigated far into the Atlantic to offload drugs from transport and storage ships.
“They managed to create genuine aquatic platforms where pilots would remain at sea for over a month at a time, carrying out several successive operations”, while other members used sophisticated equipment to monitor security agencies’ communications and movements, a police statement said.
Officers seized 30 boats, 70 vehicles and numerous pieces of hi-tech communications and surveillance equipment.
The investigation also showed that at one point the group paid as much as €12 million (US$14.2 million) to the family of a deceased crew member in order to buy their silence.