FLASH
Shkruar nga Pamfleti
Eight Albanians have been arrested in Spain as part of the largest money counterfeiting group in Europe, money with which international drug trafficking was then carried out.
Foreign media write that the police operation that led to the attack on this criminal group was coded "Romina" in honor of the well-known Italian duo Al Bano and Romina Poër, who released the hit "Felicita" in 1982. However, the "Romina" operation is a story of drug and marijuana traffickers. The Mossos d'Esquadra and the Spanish National Police named the operation after the singer since the vast majority of the banned members of the criminal group are Albanians. The investigation began with a police chase through the streets of Salou on June 23.
A Mosso patrol saw a vehicle driving at high speed and stopped it. Inside it were two men carrying 6,000 euros of fake 500 euro banknotes. And it wasn't the first time the police had seen this almost perfect forgery. It was the starting point of an operation that ended with ten arrests and the dismantling of several marijuana plantations.
The banknotes from that machine in Salou were copies of those distributed by a gang that the Mossos had already dismantled in October 2022. And it was not a gang, but "the biggest counterfeiting network in Europe", according to the Catalan police. Thus, to understand the "Romina" operation, it is necessary to return to the "Sentinel" operation. Without musical references, this time the Mossos chose the name because the first person they managed to identify from the criminal group that counterfeited the banknotes was the "sentinel", i.e. the one who guarded the money. By chance, a man found a bag in a field in Cervelló, near Sant Vicenç dels Horts, with €4.35 million in €500 notes. They were all fake, but almost perfect.
If you had to give them a grade, the cards would be rated 9.7 out of 10, according to Mosso investigators. Behind these banknotes were four men (all with a history of counterfeiting) who met in the "Picassent" prison, in Valencia. The empty hours in the common areas of that penitentiary center were the seed of the forgery network. In 2019, they were all out of jail and just needed funding. This is where the Albanians came into play, who paid them for deliveries and machines. The group started production until the pandemic hit and the borders were closed.
The material, which came from China, was no longer coming. Unable to pay the Albanians, the solution was to give them lots of fake banknotes. More or less, a fake 500 note is worth 25 euros.
This is the starting point of the "Romina" operation that was finalized this month. The banknotes in that car speeding through Salou belonged to Picassent's prisoners. The police had found the Albanians who had financed them.
"It is the first time we encounter criminal organizations that finance printing machines," warned the head of Mosso's Central Currency Counterfeiting Unit, sub-inspector Sergi Sánchez.
The pandemic caused all the investment that the Albanians made with the prisoners of Picassent to return to them in the form of fake and not real banknotes. And what did they do? They tried to buy marijuana with the fake bills. In fact, the Mossos believe that Salou's car was speeding away because the drug dealers had caught them trying to buy them off with fake money. All to take to Europe, mainly to Germany.
The operation, which already had the participation of the Civil Guard because it was also investigating some members of the criminal group, was concluded a few days ago, when the police received information that the gang had a large amount of marijuana that needed to be transported. towards Europe. Agents carried out seven house searches in El Prat de Llobregat, Reus, Mont-roig del Camp, Móra la Nova and Morell. They found everything: from pistols to police badges. Later, the Mossos and the Civil Guard learned that the criminals were stealing drugs posing as police officers. And they also found drugs: in Móra la Nova, a plantation was dismantled inside an industrial warehouse that contained a total of 162 kilograms of marijuana prepared for transport and that had a value of close to 1 million euros. In total, ten people from 22 to 63 years old were arrested, eight of them of Albanian nationality.
Captain Héctor Muñoz, head of the Organic Unit of the Judicial Police of Tarragona, explains that the group maintained a "high standard of living" without having any kind of legal income. Luxury cars, palaces, expensive clothes and all combined with "strong security measures". They had bodyguards, drones to monitor plantations and GPS devices and used coded messages. Police forces ensure that the criminal group dedicated to the marijuana traffic that they have dismantled has been very active in the Tarragona area.
The Catalan police, who gave details in a press conference, celebrate the arrests and removal from the street of some very dangerous Albanians who were in control of several marijuana plantations, who were armed and even attacked other criminal groups with violence , to steal their marijuana.
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