Galician drug boats 'a la carte' for traffickers in the Strait

They did not produce the drug or transport it. They were not responsible for introducing it into Spain nor did they sell it later. And yet, they played a key role in its illegal trafficking. Last Wednesday, the Civil Guard and the Customs Surveillance Service arrested the alleged members of a criminal organization based in Galicia dedicated to providing

on-demand

drug boats and outboard motors to the clans that operate in the waters of the Strait of Gibraltar both to traffic drugs as with human beings, as reported this Friday by the Ministry of the Interior.

The drug trafficking groups paid the now dismantled network up to half a million euros for a 12-meter-long vessel equipped with the latest technology for navigation and that can reach 60 knots (110 kilometers per hour) in favorable sea conditions. . The investigation has confirmed that with the drug boats manufactured by the now dismantled organization, an attempt had been made to introduce more than 4,300 kilos of cocaine and 4,500 kilos of hashish into the Peninsula, which were finally apprehended by the Security Forces.

In the operation, in which the Braga Judiciary Police have participated, eight boats have been seized in different phases over the last year - some when they were sailing loaded with drugs or immigrants - in addition to 25 powerful engines and abundant nautical material, such as radars. GPS and antennas. Six people have been arrested in Ourense, Pontevedra and Valença do Miño (Portugal), and another five have declared themselves under investigation, all of them accused of the crimes of belonging to a criminal organization, money laundering and drug trafficking. A complex corporate network has also been uncovered in Ourense and the north of Portugal with companies in the name of front men that were created and disappeared shortly after, and the plot used both to acquire in Portugal in an apparently legal manner the material to build the drug boats and , subsequently,

launder

the profits obtained. According to sources close to the investigation, in just three months

three million euros were moved through the banking accounts of these front companies - without activity or employees

.

Sources close to the investigation highlight that those now detained – some of whom already had a record of similar crimes – offered the Strait clans a wide portfolio of services. “They could only ask for the outboard motors or the complete boat with more or less navigation instruments. The price included taking the final product wherever its customers wanted,” these sources highlight. The purchase of the material and its assembly, which was carried out in a warehouse in Valença do Miño, was done in Portugal to take advantage of the fact that this type of boat is not considered a prohibited type in this country. In Spain, in October 2018, the Government approved a royal decree that declared illegal the possession by individuals of the also called gliders or

rhib

(acronym for their name in English,

rigid-hulled inflatable boat

) and, therefore, they can be confiscated when they are detected even if they were not carrying drugs when they are detected.

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The one baptized as Operation Vozka is known two months after one of these illegal boats rammed a Civil Guard zodiac and murdered two civil guards and injured four others in the port of Barbate (Cádiz), and only a few days after that transcended another police operation in which five drug boats were intervened. As the Ministry of the Interior highlighted at the time about this latest operation, called Sherry-Katyn-Grajuela, it had put an end to “the largest network of drug transporters by sea through high-speed vessels” that existed between the Peninsula and North Africa. .

This coup, in which 31 people were arrested, already revealed the links of the Strait traffickers with Galicia and Portugal. In fact, this network was directed from a luxurious urbanization on the outskirts of Lisbon from which it maintained “total surveillance” of the police air and maritime assets deployed to pursue them. Sources close to Operation Vozka assure that they are investigating whether this latest plot was a client of those now detained for manufacturing boats to order.

More than 100 agents from the Civil Guard and the Customs Surveillance Service (dependent on the Tax Agency) have participated in the development of Operation Vozka, as well as the Cynological Service and the Helicopter Unit of the armed institute of A Coruña. The investigation, in which more arrests are not ruled out, is directed by the head of the Investigative Court 2 of Ourense and by the Ourense Anti-Drug Prosecutor's Office.

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