Cocaine has many doors, all illegal, to reach users in large quantities. One of those entrances is in the container ports, where the one that arrives the drug hides among general cargo with a recipient who knows nothing and that is piled up in the towers of thousands of almost identical containers, until someone takes it out to take it to the market. The Civil Guard has just arrested 30 people who were engaged in that in the port of Algeciras (Cádiz), under the direction of a Spanish drug trafficker known as El Risitas, who controlled from a prison in Valencia an organization of 30 truck drivers and stevedores (a professionalized colla), who entered and left the free enclosure as if it were their own, since they had safe-conducts from their company. A total of 1,000 kilos of cocaine have been seized in two batches.
The operation began in September 2022, when investigators detected a group of truck drivers from the same freight transport company in Algeciras who seemed to be taking advantage of their access to the port because of their work to remove drugs from the containers and hide them. This fact was confirmed in December 2022, when 500 kilos of cocaine were seized at the exit of the port of Algeciras in nine suitcases hidden in the cabin of a truck. "In that action was arrested the truck driver and five other people traveling in another truck that had accessed at the same time to the port terminal and whose function was to open the container in the same terminal to remove the suitcases and introduce them into the first truck," says the Civil Guard in a press release distributed this morning.
The coup made it possible to identify the leaders of the network, at the top of which was a well-known Spanish drug trafficker, El Risitas, who had been arrested during the investigation and admitted to a Valencian prison. With him fell two of his lieutenants, who were the ones who executed the operations and logistics, and who at the same time hired people they trusted. One of these sub-bosses frequently visited the capo in prison. They always worked the same: two trucks entered the port, one of them, with a hidden colla that jumped when it reached the drug container, put it in bags and took it to the other truck. All guarded by a network of water carriers that warned of the movements of the security forces. The detainees had uniforms of Marapie or Sestibalsa, the docking and unloading society of the port.
With the operation already in full swing, the investigators ambushed the drug traffickers at the port, knowing that they were going to enter for a shipment: thus two trucks were intercepted, one of which transported another 500 kilos of cocaine in the cabin, while in the other the colla was hidden. Already with the entire network identified and with the drugs seized, the guards arrested 30 people and carried out 23 house searches, in which they have intervened "10 vehicles, 172,000 euros in cash, 40 kilograms of cocaine, an assault submachine gun and two short firearms, jewelry and watches of high economic value, a large number of cutting tools for the opening of maritime containers and uniformed garments of port stevedore to camouflage inside container terminals. The last packets of coca were marked with Yosemite Sam, the gunslinger character from Looney Tunes.
In the last two months, the Civil Guard has dismantled two other gangs that were dedicated to introducing cocaine from South America into Spain in containers that arrived at the port of Algecire. At the beginning of March, 15 people were arrested for introducing two tons of cocaine by this means, and in April the so-called Farruku clan, led by Kreshnik Budlla, Niko, who has several requirements and who is currently on the run from justice, was dismantled.
The investigation that has ended with the Giggles has been developed by the Organic Unit of Judicial Police (UOPJ) of Algeciras with the collaboration of the Central Operational Unit of the Civil Guard (UCO) and EUROPOL and has been directed by the Court of Instruction number 5 of Algeciras and coordinated by the Anti-Drug Prosecutor's Office of the Campo de Gibraltar.