Operation 'Avio'

• The three crew members of the vessel were arrested, a fishing boat with a Panamanian flag that Customs Surveillance had been investigating for four months due to suspicions of its use for drug transport.
• The interception of the vessel was carried out by the patrol boat 'Sacre', based in Las Palmas, after a previous analysis work carried out by the Maritime Intelligence Office of Customs Surveillance in Galicia.
• The 'Avio' operation is part of the 'Nautilus' maritime intelligence operation launched last year by the Customs Surveillance Service 

March 29, 2021 .- The Tax Agency has intervened in Atlantic waters south of the Canary Islands a fishing vessel flying the Panamanian flag that was carrying nearly 18,000 kilos of hashish, proceeding to arrest its three crew members, of Ukrainian nationality. The boarding of the ship by the patrol boat 'Sacre' of the Customs Surveillance Service based in Las Palmas completed the exploitation phase of the operation, called 'Avio', on Saturday morning. This is the culmination of a previous monitoring and analysis work carried out over four months by the Maritime Intelligence Office (OIM) of Customs Surveillance in Galicia.

The operation began last Friday and ended in the early hours of the morning of the 27th with the interception of the fishing vessel, named 'Albatros Guard VSL', some 170 miles southwest of the island of Gran Canaria, when it was sailing in international waters. A significant number of bales of hashish were seized on board the vessel, which, pending official counting and weight, could even exceed 18 tonnes.

The seized vessel, guarded by the patrol boat 'Sacre', arrived yesterday afternoon at the Naval Base of Las Palmas for the judicial transfer of the detainees and the drugs. The actions were carried out under the coordination of the Special Anti-Drug Prosecutor's Office of the National Court and the Central Court of Instruction No. 6.

The investigation was carried out by the regional areas of Customs Surveillance in Galicia and the Canary Islands, in collaboration with the Maritime Analysis and Operations Centre (MAOC-N), the Intelligence Centre against Terrorism and Organised Crime (CITCO) and the National Directorate of Intelligence and Customs Investigations of France (DNRED). The operation and investigations remain open.

Suspicions about the 'Albatros'

At the start of the investigation, aerial means of Customs Surveillance in Galicia detected the transit along the Galician coast heading south of the vessel, a 23-metre long fishing boat that had set sail from the port of Den Oever in the Netherlands on 7 December 2020.

Subsequent investigations by analysts from the Maritime Intelligence Office of the Regional Customs Surveillance Area in Galicia enabled the vessel to be identified as suspicious due to its characteristics, age, recent purchase and sale and registration, and in particular, the absence of fishing gear, which indicated that fishing would not be its main activity. All of this led to the vessel being considered particularly risky and it was inspected by the IOMs of Galicia and the Canary Islands, as well as by the Central Customs Surveillance Services in Madrid.

Maritime intelligence offices monitored the target over the following months, culminating in the planning from Las Palmas of the operation aimed at boarding and intercepting it, which was completed on Saturday.

The background of Operation Giant and the Nautilus device

This is a new large-scale anti-drug operation in the Canary Islands following the seizure at the end of last year of the tugboat 'Cyklo 1' in operation 'Gigante', with a quantity of hashish seized that also reached 18,000 kilos of hashish.

Both operations are part of the 'Nautilus' operation, a national project planned by the Deputy Directorate of Customs Surveillance of the Tax Agency within the activities planned in the different Action Plans for the years 2020-2021 and whose objective is the creation of maritime intelligence aimed at detecting possible suspicious vessels and initiating the corresponding investigations for the repression of illicit drug trafficking by sea and the dismantling of the criminal organizations responsible for these actions.

In this operation, the Maritime Intelligence Offices of the Customs Surveillance Service, created in 2018 and operational the following year, play a decisive role, with a very decisive role in the operations 'Gigante' and 'Avio', and previously in the operation 'Goleta' which in September led to the simultaneous boarding with Customs Surveillance air and naval means of four sailboats from the same organization with 35 tons of hashish.

The guidelines of the Annual Tax and Customs Control Plan for 2021 assign an important role to the OIMs in the strategy of the Customs and Excise Department of the Tax Agency in the fight against drug trafficking by sea.

Filming and photographs of the operation (to download the video and photos, enter the following web address):

https://we.tl/t-sm8Murwcr1