MADRID, 19 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Agents of the National Police have seized more than 66 kilos of cocaine that were going to be introduced into Spain hidden inside large-tonnage rolling machines transported in maritime containers from Peru.
The operation has ended with the arrest of eight people, six of them in Sabadell, one in Barcelona and another in El Ejido (Almería) and has been carried out in the Cadiz town of Algeciras, in Barcelona and in Almería within the framework of the fight against drug trafficking in the Campo de Gibraltar.
The modus operandi used by the organization consisted of buying industrial machines in Peru, where several people with mechanical knowledge enabled them to have hidden compartments to hide the drugs and, later, send them to Spain by sea.
The investigation began when the Peruvian authorities informed the agents of the existence of a criminal organization that would be based in Peru and Spain. Police investigations found that the investigated criminal group bought industrial machinery in Peru in which they hid narcotic substance.
At the beginning of April, the agents detected the arrival at the port of Algeciras of a container suspected of hiding a significant amount of cocaine inside industrial machinery. The investigators verified that said container carried four machines of these characteristics and, after exhaustively inspecting them, they discovered that they had been subtly modified in the base area and welded again with a steel sheet.
A few days later, the container left Algeciras aboard a ship for the port of Valencia, where it remained for several days without moving in order to prevent it from being linked to the container that was transporting the drug.
Finally, in the middle of last May, the agents detected how the container left Valencia aboard a truck to go to Barcelona, ??specifically to an apparently abandoned farm located in the municipality of Sabadell.
There they observed several individuals who, using a forklift, lowered the four rolling machines and introduced them inside a warehouse where they began to manipulate them.
The members of the organization were surprised when they began the process of extracting the cocaine and the agents arrested the six people who were there and seized 61 cocaine pills.
The investigators continued the investigations to identify and locate the people who were behind the importation of the merchandise and who had faced the expenses and documentary procedures of the same. In this sense, last September the agents arrested two other people related to the events investigated in Barcelona and El Ejido (Almería).
