The Customs Surveillance Service of the Tax Agency has intercepted and boarded this past midnight a sailboat with drugs on board, in international waters, in the Cantabrian Sea and some 30 nautical miles north of the Santander coast.
The volume of the cargo, initially cocaine, could reach two tons, an amount still to be confirmed and that, in that case, would make the cache "historic", the largest seized in the history of Cantabria.
This is an "authentic barbarity" of drugs, valued at "quite tens of millions" -about 70-, according to what the special delegate of the Tax Agency in the region, Miguel Cárcaba, has pointed out to Europa Press, who has recognized that in the service are "very happy" for the "success" of this operation.
The sailboat, type 'sloop', 13 meters long and named 'Night Falls', carried the British flag. She was located within the framework of an international operation and approached by the patrol boat 'Alcaraván I', based in Santander and belonging to the Customs Surveillance Service, which has had the collaboration of the Civil Guard and the National Police.
After the boarding, its crew members -a Spaniard, the ship's skipper, two Venezuelans and a Colombian- admitted that they were carrying cocaine and stated the amount they were transporting -which a priori matches the number and size of the bales found throughout the ship- . They did not resist being arrested and have been placed at the disposal of the Benemérita.
Meanwhile, the ship was towed to the Port of Santander, where it arrived at eight in the morning and remains in custody at the Maliaño Dock, on the north bank, the place where the drug will be unloaded and analyzed -amount and purity- once judicial authorization is obtained, from the National Court -for being intercepted in international waters- through the duty court of Santander. It is expected to obtain the same for this afternoon.
The Customs Surveillance Service located the vessel, which had left the United Kingdom and had been on the voyage for three months, around midnight, after two days of searching and after receiving information from the United Kingdom.
Cárcaba has alluded to the difficulties of finding the sailboat, at night, on the high seas and in adverse weather conditions, since it had also disconnected the instruments that allow its location and was sailing without the mandatory lights.
It was detected by radar when it was stopped, probably due to the arrival and assistance of other vessels to unload and evacuate the drug. It is unknown where she was going or at which port she planned to dock, although everything indicates that she came from South America and she was heading towards Spain.
The ship was not sailing on a certain course, but was stopped at a point located 30 miles north of the coast.
This fact was very striking, not only due to the weather conditions in the area, but also because it coincides with the usual practice in this type of operation, in which vessels transporting cocaine from South America or the Caribbean transfer to another vessel with the purpose of so that it reaches the final destination, thus making it more difficult for the authorities to detect it.
For this reason, it is presumed that the sailboat 'Night Falls' would be at those coordinates waiting for a transshipment of the drug. From the first moment of the boarding, a significant number of bundles of those usually used for cocaine trafficking could be observed on board, distributed throughout practically the entire vessel.
At that time, the four crew members were arrested, and the ship was apprehended, which was transferred to the Port of Santander to carry out the appropriate procedures.
The delegate of the Tax Agency has also referred to the exceptionality that this type of operation is carried out in waters, although international, "close" to the coast, and outside the "usual routes" for the entry of cocaine and drugs in general, such as those from Levante, the Strait of Gibraltar or the Galicians.
Thus, it seems - according to what he said - that these routes have changed towards those considered until now "calm waters", in the North, especially the Cantabrian Coast, where "we are not used to this type of operation, far from it". "This type of mafias adapts to the holes in the system," she warned.
The operation, as detailed by the Civil Guard in a statement, began as a result of international collaboration through the exchange of information between the MAOC-N (Atlantic Analysis and Operations Center), the CITCO (Intelligence Center Against Terrorism and Organized Crime), which has been the object of investigation by the three police forces (Customs Surveillance Service, National Police and Civil Guard). The National Crime Agency (NCA) of the United Kingdom collaborated in the operation.
As a result of this exchange of information, the possible involvement of a vessel suspected of illicit drug trafficking from South America and which had just crossed the Atlantic to arrive on Spanish shores was determined.
As a consequence of this, the Customs Surveillance Service of the Tax Agency established the appropriate aeronautical device in order to locate this objective that involved different resources from Galicia, Cantabria and the Basque Country.
The search for the boat lasted for more than 48 hours and, finally, as a result of it, the patrol boat 'Alcaraván I', based in Santander, located and boarded the boat at midnight from day 1 to 2. of August.
The operation has been directed and coordinated by the Anti-Drug Prosecutor of the National Court. Both the detainees, the boat and the narcotic substance will be handed over to their corresponding Central Investigating Court.
This operation, totally exceptional in the area of the Cantabrian coast, is one more of those carried out in the fight against drug trafficking in the so-called 'Atlantic Cocaine Route', known for being used by sailboats that transship from South America narcotic substances in the middle of the Atlantic for their subsequent introduction into the European continent.
