There is no rest for the drug trade in the Campo de Gibraltar. On the day that the police agency Europol visited Algeciras (Cádiz) to offer, together with the Civil Guard, information on the operation aimed at crushing the Farruku clan, both organizations have given to the drug trade, which has the port of Algeciras as a gateway, dealt another blow. They did this by arresting about twenty people from another drug organization, intervening a ton of cocaine and conducting 23 searches in the municipalities of Algeciras, San Roque and Los Barrios in Cádiz. The action comes on top of the 50 people arrested, with five tons of hashish and two others of cocaine seized, belonging to another group based between Huelva and Cádiz that has now been dismantled, the Armed Institute reported this Wednesday.
Between 150 and 200 agents have been deployed to various locations in Campo de Gibraltar since early morning to conduct both searches and arrests as part of Operation Kiken, which is still ongoing. It is a work of the Civil Guard, in collaboration with Europol and the involvement of the Rapid Action Group (GAR), resulting from the seizure of two shipments of cocaine with a total weight of almost a ton in recent months at the port of Algeciras. The organization devoted itself to the introduction of this drug by sea through the so-called missing hook method. This means that the bags or backpacks loaded with the narcotic are placed in containers at the point of origin, which are removed before the goods are checked at the destination.
To these arrests we must add another 50 that the Guardia Civil announced this Tuesday as part of Operation Castle, which began in 2022 and was designed to put an end to an organization based in Huelva and Cádiz and linked to Portugal. The group is thought to be responsible “for most of the launches of drug ships carried out across Spain,” according to sources in the investigation, who highlight that they were dedicated to shipping shipments of hashish and cocaine to different parts of Europe. . In fact, 4,800 kilos of the first substance and almost 2,000 of the second were intervened. The drug finds were made in various locations such as the mouth of the Guadiana river, a beach between Algeciras and Tarifa and the Guadalquivir river. The drug was loaded on the Moroccan coast. And in two directions: the hashish leaves Morocco for America and the cocaine later returns in the opposite direction to the west coast of Africa to later reach the peninsula.
“Several million euros a month”
This morning, Captain Pedro García, head of the Organic Unit of the Judicial Police of the Algeciras Command, gave more information about the action carried out last week that allowed the end of the so-called Farruku clan, a gang of Albanian criminals committed to murders and trafficking linked to almost ten tons of cocaine and another ten tons of hashish. Garcia has emphasized that the organization had two branches. On the one hand, the operation, whose members were based between the Campo de Gibraltar and the Costa del Sol, was responsible for the introduction and distribution of the drug throughout Europe. On the other hand, the logistics part, whose members focused on providing legal protection to the organization. Up to 19 people were arrested in this action last Wednesday, and another 20 were added in earlier phases. Meanwhile, the bosses controlled everything from Malaga, Madrid and Barcelona. Their leader, Kreshnik Budlla, aka Niko, who disguised himself as a Guardia Civil to avoid being identified and arrested, is still on the run from justice.
Among the data they presented this morning on this operation, the seizure of 25 vehicles and 22 properties worth over four million euros and the freezing of the accounts and financial products of 14 people and 30 companies stand out. “We know that the group was able to move several million euros a month in connection with illegal drug trafficking,” said the head of Europol’s European Center against Organized and Economic Crime, Burkhard Mühl. The police officer has stated that “a drug intervention is not sufficient, nor is the seizure of this organization’s assets and interactions with legal entities. The purpose of organized crime is to obtain benefits and their intention is to make as much money as possible,” for which he emphasized that the dismantling of the Farruku clan carried out by the Civil Guard was “a complete success”.
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