The Civil Guard has dismantled in Madrid an organization allegedly dedicated to introducing cocaine into Spain in commercial fruit consignments, specifically in boxes of physalis or alquequenje, in an operation in which 30 kilos of cocaine has been involved and seven implicated have been arrested.
As reported by the Civil Guard these days, the operation began last September when a suspicious shipment of this fruit from Colombia was detected.
The investigations focused on the importing company, domiciled in Madrid, which was engaged in the import and subsequent sale of the merchandise.
The agents discovered that after each shipment of almost a ton of this fruit (called ‘gooseberry’ in Colombia), the organization disposed of it by depositing it in a rented storage room in the Madrid district of Villaverde, to later give it away or throw it away in poor condition.
They only seemed interested in the cardboard boxes that transported them and that they kept in a rented apartment in the Batán neighborhood, also in Madrid, where they supposedly carried out the drug extractions.
The Civil Guard carried out several house searches in the Community of Madrid and on the Batán floor they arrested four people who were extracting the hidden cocaine from the cardboard boxes.
In total, 30 kilograms of high purity cocaine, precision scales and numerous tools for handling and extracting the drug were seized in this house.
The agents also arrested the company administrator and two other people who were allegedly in charge of receiving the shipments at the airport, hiding the cape gooseberry in a storage room, and transporting the boxes to Batán’s home.
The criminal gang was led by a Colombian citizen accused of directing and coordinating the importation of drugs into Spain from Madrid and who, at the same time, was responsible for the house where the cardboard boxes were hidden, where the other three people who They collaborated in the extraction of the drug.
The detainees are seven men between the ages of 23 and 51 and are accused of various crimes against public health, drug trafficking and belonging to a criminal group.
After being made available to the judicial authority, the judge ordered the entry into prison of six of them.
The investigation has been carried out by agents of the Civil Guard belonging to the Judicial Police Team of the Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas Airport and directed by the Investigating Court number 42 of Madrid and by the Anti-Drug Prosecutor’s Office.