• The seizure, carried out on June 23, represented the largest cocaine seizure in Alicante, with 4,318 kilos of 87% purity.

• The drug, which was hidden in a shipment of bananas, would have reached a value of more than 265 million euros in the illicit market.

July 21, 2023.- Five members of a criminal organization dedicated to drug trafficking have been imprisoned after the seizure, on June 23, of more than four tons of cocaine in a ship from Alicante, within the framework of a joint operation carried out by Customs Surveillance officials of the Tax Agency and agents of the National Police. This is the largest stash of cocaine recorded in the province of Alicante.

At the beginning of June of this year and thanks to the bilateral diplomatic relations that the Spanish state maintains with other countries, information was received from the Interior Attaché Office of the Spanish Embassy in the countries of Bulgaria, Ukraine, Albania, Macedonia of the North and Cyprus in which they warned of the settlement in the province of Alicante of an important criminal organization made up of citizens of Albanian origin that would be dedicated to the introduction and trafficking of cocaine in large quantities.

From that very moment, the investigation of the criminal network began and as its main objective the identification and investigation of its components, their habits and the headquarters where they operated.

Research procedures on the organization

Officials in charge of the investigation began a series of inquiries and investigations to find out who was part of this criminal organization, being able to identify more than five people of Albanian origin who were suspiciously preparing and equipping a warehouse at the Llano del Espartal Industrial Estate in Alicante. Members of the organization could be observed transferring machinery necessary for unloading trucks to the warehouse. In addition, they adopted measures of extreme surveillance, traveled abroad frequently and had several addresses that alternated to confuse the police. During the course of the investigation, it was possible to identify the leader of the plot and observe a visibly marked and differentiated hierarchy and distribution of tasks.

Both the ship and the vehicles used by the members of the criminal organization would be registered in the name of apparently legal companies in order to go unnoticed, hinder the police investigation and give a semblance of legality to the money obtained from the sale of drugs. More specifically, they would use a vehicle buying and selling company that would be in the name of one of the detainees of Spanish origin. Investigators attribute to this person, also detained, a previous role as a possible front man for other criminal organizations in the Levantine area, including links with front companies for the rental of ships and vehicles.

Operational phase

On June 23, officials from the Combined Customs Surveillance Unit of Malaga and agents from the National Police detected in the port of this city a shipment of several containers from Ecuador, which in addition to containing legally declared bananas, could hide some type of narcotic substance and that two of them were destined for the city of Alicante, so in close collaboration with the National Police units in the Alicante city and with due judicial authorization, discreet surveillance of said shipment was carried out. that would travel in two trucks from Malaga to Alicante.

The investigators verified that said shipment ended up hours later in a warehouse located in the Llano del Espartal industrial estate in Alicante that had been investigated days before and where the police units were already located. There they were able to observe how the members of the criminal organization unloaded the containers disguised in reflective work clothes, thus giving the image of legal and regular workers in the area.

At that moment the investigators made the decision to inspect the cargo of both trucks, discovering that, in addition to the bananas declared to customs, the vehicles hid almost 400 packages of cocaine that had a total raw weight of more than 4,800 kilos, turning out to be The net weight of the drug was 4,318 kilos, so the four men of Albanian origin and between 28 and 40 years of age were arrested for the crimes of belonging to a Criminal Organization and Against Public Health for trafficking. of substances that cause serious damage to health. The analyzes carried out by Health on the drug reveal that it had a very high purity, reaching 87%.

It was later when the 68-year-old Spanish member of the organization who acted as a front man for it was located and arrested.

Some of the detainees already had police records for similar events and two of them were in an irregular situation in Spain.

Three home searches were also carried out in Alicante and Elche, where abundant documentation, nearly 6,000 euros in cash and four high-end vehicles were seized.

This is an operation in which coordination and work between officials of the Combined Customs Surveillance Unit of Malaga and the Drugs and Organized Crime Unit of the Provincial Police Stations of Alicante and Malaga, Group 1 of Special Response against the Levante Organized Crime, where a large part of the members of this criminal organization based in the Spanish Levante have been imprisoned and the dismantling of one of the most active criminal organizations in terms of trafficking in narcotic substances.

The detainees were placed at the disposal of the Investigative Court on duty in Alicante while the operation remains open and new arrests are not ruled out in the coming days.