Guardia Civil, National Police and Tax Agency, within the framework of operation PARCE/CRISAL and after more than a year of investigation, have managed to completely dismantle an important criminal network, based in Madrid, dedicated to drug trafficking, mainly cocaine, between the Peninsula and the Canary Islands through postal parcels. This organization also operated in Lanzarote, where six arrests have taken place, out of a total of 39 arrests that have been carried out in different provinces of Spain.
The operation began in the spring of last year when Customs Surveillance officials of the Tax Agency in the Canary Islands arrested a man in Tenerife, when he was trying to receive a shipment by postal parcel containing 15 kilograms of cocaine and one kilogram of MDMA.
As a result of the operational coordination of the three bodies and after this frustrated shipment, the existence of a complex criminal network with several years of activity was discovered, aimed at introducing important shipments of cocaine camouflaged in legal parcel shipments destined for the Canary Islands.
As a result of the police seizure of the 15 kilograms of cocaine camouflaged inside a package, the organization was forced to look for other ways of introducing and distributing drugs to the Canary Islands, opting then for the shipment of drugs through the so-called "mules", human couriers on domestic flights.
Again, as a result of police work, this new method of sending drugs to the Canary Islands was detected, carrying out a series of consecutive actions that resulted in the arrest of 12 "mules" -specifically seven arrests were made at Fuerteventura airport and three at Lanzarote airport- and the seizure of nine kilograms of cocaine.
Directed by "La Negra", a "historic" drug trafficker
Continuing with the investigation, the person who from Madrid directed the investigated criminal apparatus under her orders was identified, the Colombian T.P.M, alias 'La Negra', a "historic" drug trafficker in Spain related to the entry of tons of cocaine in our country for years who, in turn, had the collaboration of a "family clan" located in Seseña (Toledo); a very hermetic and hierarchical nucleus, composed of six members of the same family, all of them Colombians, according to police forces.
Once the "mule network" was dismantled by the police, the organization resumed the original method of sending drugs camouflaged in parcels, this purpose being truncated again by the investigators when they detected and intercepted last summer, a shipment destined for the Canary Islands consisting of a refrigerator that hid 38 kilograms of cocaine inside.
A new supply route through Galician clans
The numerous shipments of cocaine seized up to that moment caused great economic losses to the organization, whose debts exceeded three million euros in addition to the consequent pressure from the Colombian cartels supplying the drug, which led the criminal group to seek new alternatives to continue with such a lucrative activity, finding a new supply route in Galicia.
It is there where they established contact with Galician drug traffickers, with the idea of preparing a new shipment of cocaine by sea in a container from South America, being verified by the agents that while this "import" was being negotiated, they again began the acquisition of small batches of cocaine to maintain their status and get money for their financing.
However, this claim was again annulled by the investigators when acting on two mules who were transporting cocaine by road from Pontevedra, one being arrested in Zaragoza, with one kilogram, and another in Orense, with another 10 kilograms of the same substance.
To do these new businesses, the members of the organization made their interviews in the emergency rooms of a hospital posing as sick people and thus avoid being detected when they made the drug exchanges.
Two searches in Arrecife
At this point, the operational exploitation phase of the investigation was carried out in which a total of 18 house searches were carried out simultaneously in the provinces of Pontevedra, Madrid, Toledo, Guadalajara, Lanzarote and Tenerife, which allowed the arrest of 23 people who are charged with the crimes of belonging to a criminal organization, money laundering, drug trafficking and illegal possession of weapons, all coordinated by the Investigating Court number 3 of La Laguna and the Special Anti-Drug Prosecutor's Office of Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
In Arrecife, two searches were carried out on November 27, which resulted in three arrests. Globally, the operation closes with 39 people arrested -13 of them in the province of Las Palmas-, of which 31 are Colombians, 5 Spaniards, 2 Venezuelans and 1 Brazilian, in addition to the intervention of 73 kg of cocaine and one kilogram of Mdma; 150,000 euros in cash, three long guns, two short guns; embargoes on four properties, 41 vehicles and 70 banking products.
In addition, this organization is linked to another important drug shipment aborted months earlier by the Guardia Civil, when they arrested a man of South American origin trying to introduce 38 kilograms of cocaine into the Canary Islands.
