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Forty people have been arrested and eight tonnes of cocaine seized as a result of a four-year international police operation targeting a criminal network that trafficked large quantities of the drug from South America to Europe via West Africa and the Canary Islands.
The lengthy investigation - which was led by Spain's Guardia Civil force and coordinated by Europol's operational task force - revealed that a Balkan cartel was using logistics hubs in West Africa and the Canaries to smuggle cocaine from Colombia, Brazil and Ecuador into the countries of the EU.
Once the drug reached Europe, it was distributed across the continent using treatment centers in Belgium, Croatia, Germany, Italy and Spain.
In a statement released on Thursday, Europol said the leaders of the drug trafficking organization were temporarily based in Turkey and Dubai.
Europol said cooperation between nine national forces - Brazil, Belgium, Croatia, Germany, Italy, Serbia, Spain, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates - had proved crucial in bringing down the network.
The Guardia Civil's involvement began in September 2020, when officers from the force intercepted a Croatian-flagged sailboat bound for the Canary Islands that was carrying a ton of cocaine. They soon discovered that the boat had received the drug cargo from a cargo ship in the Gulf of Guinea. Encrypted communications obtained from the devices of the three people arrested on the sailboat were subsequently shared with Europol, which was already investigating the cartel.
In August last year, the Guardia Civil stopped another boat, carrying 700 kg of cocaine, in Canary waters. Information gathered from that bust indicated that the same Italian-Croatian crew had used the boat for a similar run to bring 500kg of cocaine from Brazil.
When Europol shared Spanish intelligence with other partner countries, it emerged that police in Belgium, Germany and Serbia were pursuing the same individual and their associates.
As part of the ongoing investigation, Spanish police arrested four people in Málaga and Tenerife on Wednesday and seized jewellery, luxury watches, a gun, electronic equipment and €109,000 in cash.
The Guardia Civil said "unprecedented" international police cooperation had succeeded in dismantling the West African logistics hubs the cartel used to distribute cocaine across the EU.
"The operation has resulted in the seizure of almost eight tons of cocaine, 40 arrests in various countries, the confiscation of 12.5 million euros in cash in various European countries, 3 million dollars in Brazil and the freezing of more than 50 million euros in Serbia" , he added.
In August last year, Spanish police seized 9.5 tons of cocaine hidden among banana boxes in a container sent from Ecuador to the southern Spanish port of Algeciras. The collection was the largest ever found in a single container in Spain, police said at the time./ TheGuardian
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