The Spanish Guardia Civil has seized more than four tons of cocaine hidden in sacks of rice in the Port of Barcelona, Spain, and dismantled the international organization responsible for smuggling large consignments of this narcotic product.
In a statement released on Friday, the Spanish force revealed that it all started last year with an investigation into a Spanish company that was transporting containers of rice from Paraguay to the Port of Barcelona.
“Given the agents' suspicions about the existence of cocaine in some of the 10 containers that arrived, it was agreed to carry out an exhaustive search of these containers. The agents found around 4,020 kilos of cocaine, distributed in bags of powder cocaine and hidden among the bags of rice,” he reveals.
According to the Guardia Civil, “this is the largest quantity of this substance found to date in the Port of Barcelona”.
According to the same note, the organization had an infrastructure in Asunción (Paraguay) to “turn the drug into powder, pack it in plastic bags and put it in rice sacks which were then sewn by hand and sent to Europe”.
At the end of October, after the containers had been sent to Barcelona, “Paraguayan police forces intercepted a new shipment of 3,312 kilos of cocaine bound for Belgium at the port of Villeta (Paraguay)”.
In March of this year, in Southampton, UK, “another shipment of 2,100 kilos of cocaine was intercepted, destined for the Spanish company under investigation, based in Toledo”. On this occasion, “the criminal organization, diversifying the risks, had used the port of Guayaquil, in Ecuador, and had chosen to introduce packages camouflaged with cocoa beans”.
The criminal network, based in Spain, “was made up of businessmen specializing in import and export, who were in charge of giving the illicit activities a legal appearance, investors who provided the capital needed for the logistics of the operations and security guards in charge of protecting the rest, both from possible violent actions and from police surveillance and investigations.”
The operation resulted in the arrest of eight people in Spain, including the company director. Five people are still under investigation. For their part, the Paraguayan police authorities arrested two people, including the main leader of the organization in Paraguay.
“In total, 9,432 kilos of cocaine were seized, of which 4,020 kilos were intercepted in the Port of Barcelona. This record quantity highlights the importance of the criminal organization that was dismantled and whose objective was to smuggle large quantities of cocaine to Europe,” the Guardia Civil stressed.
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