Joint operation of the Tax Agency, National Police and Civil Guard

• The operation - framed within the plan to combat drug trafficking in the Campo de Gibraltar - has been carried out in Barcelona, Algeciras (Cádiz) and El Ejido (Almería), and has ended with the arrest of eight people
• The 'modus operandi' used by the organization consisted of purchasing industrial machines in Peru, where several people with mechanical knowledge enabled hidden compartments to hide the drugs, and later sending them to Spain by sea.

October 19, 2022.- Customs Surveillance Officials of the Tax Agency, in a joint operation the National Police and the Civil Guard, and with the collaboration of the Peruvian authorities, have seized more of 66 kilos of cocaine that were going to be introduced into Spain hidden inside industrial machinery. The operation - framed within the plan to combat drug trafficking in Campo de Gibraltar - has been carried out in Barcelona, Algeciras (Cádiz) and Almería, and has ended with the arrest of eight people in Sabadell (six), Barcelona (one) and El Ejido (one). The modus operandi used by the organization consisted of purchasing industrial machines in Peru, where several people with mechanical knowledge enabled hidden compartments to hide the drugs, and later sending them to Spain by sea.

The investigation began, thanks to international police cooperation, when the Peruvian authorities informed the agents of the existence of a criminal organization that would be based in Peru and Spain. The information provided referred to an organization specialized in the export of significant quantities of cocaine hidden inside large-tonnage rolling machines, through maritime containers.

'Modus Operandi'

The police investigations confirmed that the criminal group investigated bought industrial machinery in Peru to move it to warehouses where several people, with mechanical knowledge, set up hidden compartments inside with the purpose of hiding the narcotic substance and making it difficult for the authorities to locate it. police. Once the concealment of the drugs was completed, the machines were exported, in containers, by sea to Spain.

At the beginning of April, agents detected the arrival, at the port of Algeciras, of a container suspected of hiding a significant amount of cocaine inside industrial machinery. The investigators verified that said container carried four heavy-duty rolling machines and, after exhaustively inspecting them, they discovered that they had been subtly modified in the base area and welded again with a steel sheet. A few days later, the container left Algeciras aboard a ship to the port of Valencia, where it remained for several days without making any movement in order to avoid being linked to the container transporting the drugs.

Caught red-handed while extracting cocaine

Finally, in the middle of last May, the agents detected how the container was leaving Valencia aboard a truck to head towards Barcelona, specifically to an apparently abandoned farm located in the municipality of Sabadell. There they observed several individuals who, using a forklift, lowered the four rolling machines and introduced them inside a warehouse where they began to manipulate them.

Thanks to a joint device from the Customs Surveillance Service of the Tax Agency, the National Police and the Civil Guard, the members of the organization were surprised when they began the cocaine extraction process. For this reason, the agents arrested the six people who were there and seized 61 cocaine pills - located when disassembling the steel sheets from the base of the machines - which yielded an approximate weight of 66 kilos of narcotic.

The investigators continued the investigations to identify and locate the people who were behind the importation of the merchandise and who had covered the expenses and documentation procedures for it. In this sense, last September the agents arrested two other people related to the events investigated in Barcelona and El Ejido (Almería). Likewise, they carried out three searches in Barcelona and the Almeria municipalities of El Ejido and Roquetas de Mar.

This method of hiding cocaine in industrial machinery has been used on other occasions to try to introduce drugs into our country. In fact, this same year, two other operations have been carried out, without links to the present one, in which the drug concealment system was similar. In one of them, 620 kilos of cocaine that was hidden in a 12-ton rotor were seized in the port of Barcelona and in the other, 464 kilos of cocaine were discovered hidden in an eleven-ton crushing machine. In both cases, the use of heavy industrial machinery was necessary to extract the drug.