The 4,000 kilos of cocaine seized by the Special Operations Group (GEO) of the National Police 1,100 kilometers from the Canary Islands from a merchant ship bound for Vigo would have generated a business of more than one billion euros, according to the Government Delegate in the islands, Anselmo Pestana. He made this statement at a press conference held to report on this operation, called Traba, which has made it possible to seize the largest cocaine shipment so far this year in Spain.
The 4,000 kilos of cocaine were seized last Wednesday night in a raid by the Police and the Navy on the ship transporting them, the Little Girls, a merchant ship flying the Tanzanian flag that had departed for Spain from Panama.
Its value as a pure commodity, before being adulterated for distribution on the streets, amounts to 240 million euros, and the investigation that made its seizure possible is ongoing, since, in addition to the arrest of the ship's nine crew members, more arrests are expected on land.
The chief inspector of the Special Response Group against Organized Crime (Greco) of Galicia, Emilio Rodríguez, highlighted the "great potential" of the criminal organization that is intended to be dismantled within the framework of this operation, but did not give more details, as the summary secrecy has been decreed.
In addition to being able to charter a merchant ship of more than 54 meters in length, 12 in beam, and four and a half in depth, investigators assume that this large shipment is not the first they have sent to Europe.
A second phase to dismantle the gang's structure
In the second phase of this operation, more "hush-hush" and the one they are working on now, the aim is to "attack" the economic structure of this gang and identify and arrest all the members, now that action has been taken against its "weakest link".
"No one is more important than another, but the great heads of these globalized organizations are usually very far removed" from those who transport cocaine along the Atlantic route, of vital importance to the mafias that take it out of countries such as Venezuela, Suriname or Brazil where it is not produced, so that it can be consumed in Europe, Rodríguez has said.
The head of Greco in Galicia has explained that the major fight against drug trafficking in that community in northern Spain is directed towards the speedboats that work for large clients.
Rodríguez has said that Spain is a point of entry for cocaine, but not one of the main ones, which are located in ports in northern Europe.