Customs Surveillance officials of the Tax Agency, in a joint operation with the National Police, have canceled the main route of entry of cocaine into Spain for the Balkan cartel with the intervention of more than 1,700 kilos of this drug in the port of Valencia and the arrest of one of its members.
The cocaine was hidden in maritime containers of fruit from Ecuador in various ways: making use of holes in the refrigeration of the containers, designing false floors on them or beams with cavities inside to house the narcotic substance.
The detainee would have come from Albania to supervise the transaction and has military training and high operational knowledge, according to a statement from the Tax Agency and the National Police.
The investigation began when it became known that the network could be importing maritime containers with fruits from Ecuador on a weekly basis that would hide significant quantities of drugs.
In a first phase of the operation, which had the collaboration of the Civil Guard, the investigators managed to detect the companies that could be used by the Balkan cartel, and it was verified how they had begun to use the maritime containers that entered Spain from regularly, importing several dozen containers from a fruit exporting company in Ecuador, destined for Valencia.
Last June they tried to introduce a significant amount of cocaine that was hidden in the refrigeration compartments, a total of 45 kilos that were seized. A member of the criminal organization was arrested. In addition, three mobile phones and various materials were seized to extract the drugs from the containers.
In the second phase, through various inspections of containers that had arrived at the port of Valencia, two containers were found that hid 44 and 46 kilos of cocaine each, and a third container with a sophisticated structure that hid 200 kilos of cocaine in its false floor. the same substance.
550 kilos of cocaine were also seized in the floor beams of a container, before discovering the arrival of two new containers that hid the drugs in the floor of the structure and carried another 831 kilos.
