The Tax Agency seizes over half a tonne of cocaine in waters north of Alicante
Repression of drug trafficking
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The AEAT Customs Surveillance patrol boat 'Arao' finds one of the largest shipments of cocaine so far this year in the open sea
March 16, 2015.- The Tax Agency has seized a total of 560 kilos of high-purity cocaine floating adrift in waters north of Alicante, ready to be rescued by smuggling organizations. The shipment, the second of its kind intercepted by the Agency in the Valencian Community in just a few days, represents one of the largest seizures of this drug so far this year.
Just a week after the last shipment intercepted in waters near Valencia, around 300 kg of cocaine on board a pleasure boat, the patrol boat 'Arao' of Customs Surveillance of the Tax Agency in Alicante, carried out a new operation yesterday afternoon that has allowed the recovery in open sea of what may be the most important shipment seized in the entire State in recent months, more than half a ton of high purity cocaine, ready to be cut and distributed.
The operation began when the crew of the patrol boat spotted a series of floating packages adrift in the water off the coast of Gandía while on surveillance duty.
The captain of the boat ordered the engines to be stopped in order to inspect the area and little by little a total of 18 bales were hoisted on board, all of them well prepared, with plastic drums that acted as buoys so that they would float for the necessary time before their rescue and adequately waterproofed.
The patrol car received orders to enter the nearest port and at around five o'clock on Sunday afternoon a unit of the National Police Corps was already waiting for it in Denia, whose Commission took charge of the drug shipment for its transfer and custody in police facilities until its final storage.
These latest operations on significant cocaine shipments in waters close to the coast have a recent precedent in 2013. In October of that year, a series of backpack-type packages, intertwined, containing 900 kilos of cocaine, were found on the shore of a beach near the capital of Valencia.