Two police operations, carried out in parallel in Vigo and Valencia, have served to seize the largest stash of drugs in the same batch: 11 tons of cocaine, which was going to be distributed throughout Europe. In one case it was hidden between frozen tuna loins; in the other under the secret double bottoms of maritime containers. The National Police has arrested 20 people who were part of two organizations. Behind them, according to the first hypotheses, is the dangerous Albanian mafia, increasingly stronger in Spain.
The investigation in Galicia, which has involved the largest seizure of cocaine in history in Galicia with 7,500 kilos, began after agents identified a business network created by the criminal organization itself to send large quantities of cocaine from South America to A Coruña, where the company's headquarters were located.
The company was dedicated to the international wholesale trade of frozen fish and seafood. And the person responsible, of A Coruña origin, hid his illicit activity in the voluminous flow of containers by sea. Investigators monitored the company's activity for months, detecting similar shipments. What the organization intended was to cover up, in this continuous movement of travel, the transportation of cocaine when the case arose.
According to the Police, several containers of this company were inspected this year in port facilities, but the organization was so confident in its plan that it hid 7,500 kilos of cocaine in one of those containers. Hidden among frozen fish. The agents found that the seven tons of narcotics were marked with four different logos: they correspond to different criminal organizations that were to receive the large stash.
The other operation, in the port of Valencia, has resulted in the seizure of 3,500 kilograms of cocaine. At the beginning of November, according to the Police, a batch of four containers arrived at the Valencian port. They were not moved for almost a month, so it was thought that they had been abandoned. Nothing could be further from reality: it was part of the plan of the criminal organization that was behind them. At the end of November they "suddenly" changed the company receiving the merchandise.
This new company requested the delivery of the four containers, its administrator being an old acquaintance in the police files, since curiously he had been arrested in another anti-drug operation. But the investigation continued its course to try to strike squarely at the heart of the organization.
The first of the containers in the batch left the port of Valencia to an open field on the outskirts of the city. He remained there all night. The next day, they shipped the next containers. The police followed their steps until they all met in an industrial estate in Xirivella. There was no movement, the researchers say, to start unloading the containers. Until the operation was exploited by the Special Operations Group.
The organization had obtained practically the entire container inside a warehouse, so they found the cocaine stored in sports bags, next to a door where a van was waiting, ready to load and leave.
