Operation 'Avio'

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

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

The operational action 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', about 170 miles southwest of the island of Gran Canaria, when it was sailing through International waters. A significant number of bales of hashish were seized on board the vessel, which, pending counting and official weight, could even exceed 18 tons.

The seized vessel, guarded by the patrol boat 'Sacre', arrived yesterday afternoon at the Las Palmas Naval Base for the detainees and the drugs to be brought to justice. The actions have been 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 has been developed by the regional Customs Surveillance areas in Galicia and the Canary Islands, with the collaboration of the Maritime Analysis and Operations Center (MAOC-N), the Intelligence Center against Terrorism and Organized Crime (CITCO) and the Directorate National Intelligence and Customs Investigations of France (DNRED). The operation and investigations remain open.

Suspicions about the 'Albatros'

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

Investigations subsequently carried out by the analysts of the Maritime Intelligence Office of the Regional Customs Surveillance Area in Galicia allowed the vessel to be identified as suspicious due to its characteristics, age, its recent purchase and sale and flag and, especially, due to the absence of fishing gear that They indicated that fishing would not be their main activity. All of this led to the vessel being considered a special risk and its control was carried out by the IOM of Galicia and the Canary Islands, as well as by the Central Customs Surveillance Services in Madrid.

The maritime intelligence offices monitored the target during the following months, which culminated with the planning from Las Palmas of the operation aimed at its boarding and interception completed on Saturday.

The background to operation 'Gigante' and the 'Nautilus' device

This is a new major anti-drug operation in the Canary Islands after the seizure at the end of last year of the tug-type vessel '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' device, 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 criminal organizations responsible for these actions.

In this device, 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 operations 'Gigante' and 'Avio', and previously in operation ' 'Schooner' which in September led to the simultaneous boarding of four sailboats from the same organization with 35 tons of hashish by Customs Surveillance aircraft.

The guidelines of the Annual Tax and Customs Control Plan for 2021 attribute to IOMs an important role 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 you must enter the following web address):

https://we.tl/t-sm8Murwcr1