Two-year probe leads to 4.5 tonne cocaine haul in Spain
Police seized 4.5 tonnes of cocaine aboard a fishing boat and arrested 11 people in the culmination of a two-year probe involving law enforcement officials from Britain and Portugal, Spanish officials said today.
The drugs were confiscated on Friday from an unnamed vessel on the high seas, police said, without specifying the location. The cocaine had an estimated street value of €151.4m. The detainees are of Spanish, Colombian and British nationality, they said.
The ring smashed in the operation had the highest capacity ever seen for smuggling cocaine into Spain, said Miguel Garcia Izquierdo, director of a Spanish police unit specialising in drug trafficking and organised crime.
The suspects were arrested in the southern Costa del Sol resort area, where three Britons were picked up, and in the northwest Galicia region.
Two of those arrested in Galicia were sons of a reputed drug trafficker killed by hitmen in 1994 after co-operating with police in a investigation of a separate drug gang, Garcia Izquierdo said.
The cocaine seized on Friday had come from Colombia and was destined for Spain, Portugal and other European countries, the police chief said.
Garcia Izquierdo said the investigation began two years ago when police uncovered Britons who had contacts with a major drug-smuggling ring based in Galicia.
