According to the LKA, there were eleven arrests. Among other things, the defendants are accused of having organized deliveries of cocaine with a total weight of more than 23 tons from South America to Europe. The investigations have been ongoing since 2020 and were conducted by the Hannover Public Prosecutor’s Office together with the LKA and the Hannover Customs Investigation Office. More information about the operation could not be published, he said. A press conference is scheduled for this Thursday.
According to information from Norddeutscher Rundfunk, the operation is aimed at alleged supporters of a record cocaine smuggling operation from last year. Customs at the port of Hamburg intercepted 16 tonnes of the drug in cargo containers from Paraguay, and another seven tonnes were discovered during a related operation in Belgium. The discovery in Hamburg was the largest single cocaine bust in Europe to date.
According to previous information from customs, the alleged organizer of the smuggling in the Netherlands had already been caught after the operation in February 2021. He was therefore a 28-year-old managing director of a Rotterdam trading company.
According to the Lower Saxony LKA in Hannover, police and customs have been investigating the alleged group in Germany since 2020. The work was covered up and the criminals acted internationally. Therefore, these investigations have already led to operations. Since 2020, 130 kilos of marijuana and cocaine have been seized.
According to the official, 35 objects in Germany were searched during the attack on Wednesday, especially in Lower Saxony. The focus of the campaign was therefore on the Hanover region. There were also searches in other communities in Lower Saxony, as well as in Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein and North Rhine-Westphalia.
At the same time, there were internationally coordinated police operations in the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and Paraguay, the LKA said. LKA President Friedo de Vries spoke of a “demonstration of the functioning of cooperation between European and international security authorities”. It is a “great success” in the fight against organized drug trafficking.