The Spanish Guardia Civil, aided by Europol, has dismantled a criminal network involved in the multi-ton trafficking of cocaine from South America to the EU. During various operations, 8 locations in Cádiz and Málaga were searched, 13 people were arrested, and seizures included: 6.5 tons of cocaine, vehicles, luxury watches, a large number of electronic devices and €1.5 million in cash.
The leader of the criminal network is considered to be one of Spain’s biggest drug traffickers. Based in Malaga, the kingpin headed a large-scale network, smuggling tons of cocaine from Ecuador and Colombia to the EU in a wholesale type of criminal business structure.
For the smuggling of cocaine, the criminal network used another means to stash their illicit cargo – bananas. The cover shipment was the importation of bananas from Ecuador and Colombia. Once the shipments were extracted from the port of Algeciras and were on their way to their legal destination, they were diverted to a warehouse where the pallets with cocaine were replaced with identical ones containing bananas.
Source: barrons.com