The historic Galician drug clans have found a profitable way of diversifying their business in the manufacture of narco boats dedicated to hashish trafficking and the irregular transport of people. The forces and security bodies have detected how the border with Portugal is becoming the factory for these high-speed boats which are then transferred to the area of ??the Strait of Gibraltar. The Galician criminal organizations guarantee the “reliability” of the narco-boats and the “competence” of their pilots acquired in navigating the estuaries between the estuaries, according to police sources. Each narco launch customized to the taste of traffickers costs around half a million euros.
The last major police blow to this reinvention of the Galician clans was made by the Civil Guard and the Customs Surveillance Service during the Vozka operation, in which eight boats were confiscated. Not all in the manufacturing phase; some in full sailing with bundles of hashish or migrants on board. 25 large displacement engines, nautical equipment, GPS radars and antennas have also been involved. The agents have been able to verify that some of the ships manufactured by the dismantled organization are linked to the apprehensions of more than 4,000 kilos of hashish from the Moroccan coast.
The modus operandi begins with the creation of front companies – always in the name of frontmen – which are used for the acquisition of nautical equipment. A financial framework that makes it difficult for investigators to follow the trail of money from illicit activities, mainly drug trafficking. The materials, according to the organic judicial police unit of the command of the Civil Guard of Ourense, come from the international market destined for the north of Portugal. In this territory is where the clans find the best refuge to manufacture narcolanches, since, unlike in Spain, they are legal there.
A 2018 decree by the Government of Pedro Sánchez allows these boats to be confiscated even if they are not carrying drugs. For three years, the narco-launches confiscated from traffickers were used by the National Police and the Civil Guard in the fight against drug trafficking, but from November 2021 the immediate cessation of use was ordered due to a complaint about the dangerousness of these boats. A constant complaint of the police unions is the inferiority of the conditions with which they face increasingly aggressive mafias. It was precisely one of these narco boats that claimed the lives of two civil guards in Barbate last February.
The criminal organizations that operate on the border have been nourished by mechanics highly specialized in nautical knowledge, in addition to the transporters who move the narco-boats to the exact point requested by the traffickers in the Straits. Their transfer, according to the same sources, can be by sea or land, camouflaged in large vehicles. But before that, comes the a la carte service that can range from the simple supply of the outboard motors or the complete narco launch. While the manufacturing price ranges from 100,000 euros, they are then sold for five times more. These are, as detailed in the armed institute, boats of more than 12 meters in length with engines of 300 horsepower each. This means that they can reach 100 kilometers per hour with a load capacity of up to three tons. For practical purposes: they cross the Strait in less than 15 minutes. Record time that can hardly be surpassed by the means that the police have.
After the recent dismantling of one of the narcos’ subsidiaries dedicated to this business – which resulted in six arrests in Ourense, Pontevedra and Valença do Miño (Portugal) – investigators are looking to connect links to find out which drug traffickers were among the your customer portfolio. Serious indications point to two of them being El Bola, who was a loyal collaborator of Los Castañas and Messi del Hachís, and El Piraña. But they are convinced that the list is much more extensive.
