At first they used a small excavator. Then metal tools. They rummaged through 19 tons of scrap metal to finally find a sarcophagus with thick aluminum walls. They opened it with strong scissors and found several rectangular packages inside. They ran some tests and, bingo, found the cocaine they were looking for. Specifically, it was 720 kilos that were shipped in a container from Costa Rica to the port of Malaga and from there transported by road by truck to Alcalá de los Gazules, a city in Cádiz. Eight people were arrested in a joint operation by the Civil Guard, the National Police and the Customs Surveillance Service. Two of them experienced similar events in the port of Algeciras in 2018.
The metal sarcophagus, built to be completely waterproof, was intended not only to store the medicines, but also to go unnoticed as one of the thousands of scrap fragments – most of them engine parts – transported in a port container from Costa Rica to Spain. Up to 600 packets of cocaine – each weighing 1.2 kilograms – traveled across the more than 8,000 kilometers that separate the two countries, hidden inside and in turn hidden among the 19 tons of aluminum pieces in which investigators later searched for them. The plan was drawn up by an organization based in Campo de Gibraltar.
For months, agents have been monitoring the movements of the members of this gang, including old acquaintances of the police due to their background in drug trafficking. The work gradually yielded results until it was directed directly at an export company in Costa Rica that had also been investigated years earlier for links to cocaine trafficking in port containers. At the end of last summer, the company sent several of them to the port of Malaga, whose arrival was scheduled for the month of October. It was an opportunity to check whether there really were drugs in it. It would not be the first time: already in 2019, the National Police thwarted the transport of eight kilos of cocaine from Brazil through the port area of Málaga, which was probably a test to check whether the capital of the Costa del Sol It could be a good entry route for this material may be from South America.
Suspicious route
The goods shipped from Costa Rica finally arrived on October 9th and investigators tracked all containers from the Costa Rican company under investigation. The trucks followed their planned routes until one of them deviated from its designated route. He took small roads and finally reached a farm on the edge of Alcalá de los Gazules, in the heart of the Los Alcornocales Natural Park. The delivery of the container to this area, in the middle of the forest, made investigators suspicious and decided to enter and search the warehouse where the container had been stored.
They then used the backhoe and metal tools to find a metal sarcophagus hidden among scrap metal, and the decarceration shears to open it and find 720 kilograms of cocaine, most of it in packages wrapped in blue plastic with the word HUBLOT screen-printed on them. In parallel, officers arrested eight people and carried out nine house searches, during which cash, a Guardia Civil uniform, a frequency detector, two high-quality watches and various computer equipment were confiscated. Also various documents that have allowed us to verify the impact of the criminal organization in the municipalities of Motril and Almuñécar, on the tropical coast of Granada.
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The operation was led by the Mixed Investigative Court No. 3 of San Roque (Cádiz) and carried out by customs surveillance groups from the Málaga Tax Authority, investigators from the Central Operational Unit of the Guardia Civil (UCO), as well as the Drugs and Organized Crime Unit (UDYCO) and the Marbella National Police Narcotics Unit. The case is in the hands of the Mixed Court No. 3 of San Roque (Cádiz).