Walter Finch
DRUGS might be harder to come by in Ibiza for a while after a police swooped on nearly two tonnes of cocaine with the now-notorious swastika branding.
Separately, a 58-year-old Dutchman was stopped at Palma airport carrying 10,900 MDMA pills and 2.1 kilos of amphetamines.
The two busts mark the largest hauls of MDMA and cocaine respectively and the dismantling of the biggest criminal organisation smuggling cocaine in the Balearic Islands to date.
As well as 1,821 kilos of coke, police also hauled in 3,300 ecstasy pills, 500 kilos of cutting agents, and 90 kilos of ketamine, and made an impressive 82 arrests.
The Guardia Civil and the Policia Nacional had both independently been pursuing a trafficking gang based out of Barcelona that moved the drugs into the Balearics.
When the two police bodies realised they were after the same target, they joined forces and set up a joint investigation group.
The traffickers used lorry drivers who took advantage of their work in legitimate firms to make the drug shipments without the companies’ knowledge.
They constantly changed trucks and drivers to throw investigators off the scent, leading to a police team dedicating all their time to this one case.
The investigation, which involved police from both Barcelona and Mallorca, spanned over 18 months and arrested 72 people in an earlier phase.
During other joint operations, 63 kilos of cocaine in packages known as ‘bricks’, 90 kilos of ketamine, 3,300 ecstasy pills, 500 kilos of cutting agent and €460,000 were seized.
Three cocaine processing laboratories located in the province of Barcelona were also dismantled.
On March 6, cops opened a container at the port of Barcelona, where they found 649 kilos of cocaine hidden among plastic boxes.
This container had arrived at the port a few days earlier from Panama, resulting in ten more people arrested.
