The cache discovered in the port of Algeciras is the largest seizure of this drug in a single container both in Spain and in all of Europe.

INFORMATION

Closed 06 NOV 2024 16:03 Updated 06 NOV 2024 16:24

Four hundred million euros sold per kilo and 778 million  sold at retail per gram. This is the value of the 13,062 kilograms of cocaine seized in the port of Algeciras inside a container of bananas imported from Ecuador by a company from El Campello. The Tax Agency and the National Police have presented this Wednesday in Algeciras the balance of the operation – advanced by this newspaper – and have revealed that in addition to being the largest cache of cocaine seized in Spain,  it is the second in all of Europe – although the first discovered in a single container – and one of the most important worldwide. In 2021, more than 16 tons of cocaine were seized in five containers in the port of Hamburg.

The couple responsible for the El Campello company that imported the container is still missing after fleeing after allegedly being alerted to the discovery of the drug and so far only one woman has been arrested, who is the sister of the administrator of the company under investigation. This woman is free with charges despite  the fact that the Prosecutor’s Office requested her entry into prison, but the court did not order it after the argument of her defense, exercised by the lawyer Francisco Miguel Galiana Botella.

The deputy director of Customs Surveillance Operations, Manuel Montesinos, stressed that the seizure “is not the result of chance”, but of the four-year investigation of the importing company of El Campello, which “was carrying out a real commercial activity, but that did not add up, because it had no benefits or infrastructure behind it”, so the investigators suspected that it could be a cover.

The investigators of the National Police and Customs Surveillance have been discreetly monitoring the activity of this company for four years, carrying out more than 200 inspections of containers without raising suspicion in the company.

For this reason, those investigated felt confident enough to carry out a large operation. The investigators detected it when  they stopped working with banana exporters from other Latin American countries and focused exclusively on an exporter from Ecuador, known to the police of his country for his links to drug trafficking.

The container of bananas where the drug was coming from the port of Guayaquil (Ecuador) and the Ecuadorian exporter appeared in customs and police databases with a history of illicit trafficking. Upon arrival at the port of Algeciras, the container was inspected by the Tax Agency‘s ‘Medusa’ mobile scanner, and already in the first images discrepancies were observed between the declared cargo and the real one that led to the opening, carried out on October 14, as already published by this newspaper.

Police intercept 13 tonnes of cocaine in Algeciras, the largest cache of drug trafficking in Spain / NATIONAL POLICE

The contaminated container had a screen made up of boxes actually loaded with bananas to hide the drug. Behind this screen was a large number of boxes, identical to the previous ones, but inside which bricks of cocaine were hidden packaged to the exact size of those boxes.

Five records

The Court of Instruction number 3 of Algeciras authorized five searches in El Campello, Alicante, Almoradí and Madrid and the investigators have intervened abundant documentation that will be analyzed.

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