Drug raft whose crew members claimed to have lined the toilets with 50 euro bills | Spain

This photo was found by the National Police on the cell phone of a man detained. One of the criminals had sent it to other members of his organization to show the profits he was making from drug trafficking. In it you can see the bathroom floor and the toilet covered with 50 euro notes, and the man who took the photo has another wad in his hand. This is the historic photo that summarizes Operation Mentor, a large device in which the police of 11 countries have participated and which has allowed the largest device to be destroyed narcofleet So far, eight of the 10 sailboats present and 36 vehicles were confiscated. There are 51 detainees of 15 different nationalities – 26 of them in Spain, and more arrests are expected in the coming days. 1,500 kilograms of cocaine have also been seized, according to a report by the Interior Ministry on Friday. Police have not yet been able to name the drug trafficker who hid that pile of notes.

The investigation began in June 2020, when agents of the National Police’s Drugs and Organized Crime Unit (Udico), in collaboration with the British National Crime Agency (NCA), detected the presence of an organization of drug traffickers based on the Costa del Sol that had an unusual number of sailboats placed in the name of front people. With them they allegedly brought large consignments of cocaine from South America to southern Spain and from there distributed them to the rest of Europe. The investigation revealed that the conspiracy used the ports of Valencia, Alicante, Almería and Málaga to anchor their ships before sending them to the islands of Tenerife, Gran Canaria, El Hierro and Lanzarote, as well as the Azores (Portugal) and Cape Verde, from where they sailed to South America to take advantage of the winds and sea currents.

In South America, they would dock in Brazil, Colombia, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, Saint Lucia, Barbados or Panama and, from there, go to an agreed point in international waters near the Caribbean Sea where they could collect the shipment. They were transferred from other ships, mainly fishing. Once loaded with the drugs, they made a return trip to another point in international waters close to the European or African coasts, and there they transferred the cargo to other ships that were in charge of making the final trip to Spain.

in front of it narcofleet Investigators have found a citizen of Norwegian nationality and Iranian origin who lives in Alicante and bears the surname Teacher Because he used his activity in Internet courses as a screen as a Norwegian teacher. As the police explained in their note, Teacher – who has managed to avoid arrest for the time being – was in charge of recruiting the crew of the sailboats (three sailors for each boat, each of whom charged around 300,000 euros for a round trip) and maintaining the boats. In his conversations, this boss claimed that he had been smuggling drugs for more than 20 years and that he had earned the respect of the main Colombian and Mexican cartels, who entrusted him with the transfer of the drug to Europe. It has long been classified as HVT (its acronym in English stands for “High Value Target”, which refers to the most sought-after target).

In your work, Teacher They had another Norwegian citizen, this one settled in Valencia, as lieutenant, and four alleged drug traffickers established in Marbella – a British man and his son, a Canadian and a Montenegrin – as well as connections with Albanian clans, organizations that in recent years have taken control of the smuggling of cocaine into Europe, financing part of the large stockpile. To communicate, they all used encrypted mobile phones and code words to refer to the sailboats – always using English first names such as John

, Ben, Henry, Peter one of two Mike-; This way they did not have to use visible helmets on their helmets, which made it difficult for the police to locate them. In addition, they had a complex business structure that they used to launder the enormous profits they obtained. In fact, the drug fleets charged between 25 and 30% of the value of the shipments transported.

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What seemed like a perfect shipping mechanism began to fall apart last December, when an organization’s boat loaded with 1,500 kilograms of cocaine (which is worth more than 45 million euros on the black market according to Europol) suffered a mechanical breakdown while at sea 600 nautical miles from the island of Martinique, which prevented it from continuing sailing. The criminal organization immediately dispatched a ship from the Caribbean and another from Cape Verde to try to transfer the drugs and continue the journey, but before they arrived the shipment was intercepted by a French ship that had been alerted by Spanish agents. Shortly after, four members of the organization who lived on the Costa del Sol were arrested when they were meeting in a bar in Marbella. When they were arrested, they were trying to find out why the shipment had been seized. According to investigative sources, they had a dozen encrypted phones with them. That same day lieutenant Teacher,

The progress of the investigation made it possible to ascertain that despite the accident the organization continued its activity and that, in fact, it was preparing to send two sailboats from its fleet to collect different reserves of 1,000 kilograms of cocaine. On June 24, investigators decided to launch a massive operation to intercept the cargo in international waters. The action, in which police officers from a dozen countries participated, resulted in the arrest of another 39 people and numerous searches, 28 of them in Spain, most in the province of Malaga. Those arrested include 16 Norwegians, including a man who had served 15 years in prison for bank and armored van robberies and who enjoyed the respect of Eastern European mafias, as the police explained in a note.

In addition to the National Police and the British NCA, the Norwegian National Criminal Investigation Service (NCIS) and the US Anti-Drug Agency (Drug Enforcement Administration-DEA), directed by the Investigative Court No. 4 of Arrecife (Lanzarote), have participated in the operation (directed by the US Anti-Drug Administration-DEA), as well as the European Union Agency for Police Cooperation (Europol) and police agents from France, Poland, Portugal, Bulgaria, Panama and Saint Lucia.