Police have arrested two people, a Czech and a Russian, who were trying to smuggle 103 kilos of cocaine into Spain. The value of the drugs would be €3.5 million wholesale, €6.5 million retail.
The operation started last May with a tip-off from the Hungarian authorities that an organisation in Spain was about to bring in a shipment of around 100 kilos of cocaine from the Caribbean.
The organisation were utilising the services of the Czech national, a man familiar with the drugs trafficking world and shipments by sea. However, the man had been arrested in 2006 by the French authorities with 343 kilos of cocaine in his sailing boat, so was relatively easy to track. Why he was at liberty is anybody’s guess.
He was, and he set off in a boat registered in Vanatu with his cargo of drugs, briefly stopping in the Azores to effect some repairs, before continuing to the Spanish coast. The boat was intercepted off the coast of Almería and escorted to port.
A thorough search of the vessel revealed the stash of drugs hidden in the kitchen, or galley if one were to be more nautical. The investigation is still ongoing and further arrests have not been ruled out.