In recent weeks, Spanish security forces carried out a mega operation in which 11 tons of cocaine were seized from Albanian mafias.

That country’s police reported carrying out two operations in which 20 people were arrested.

“In one week we managed to remove 11,000 kilos of cocaine from the market,” Antonio Martínez Duarte, head of the Central Brigade of the National Police’s Drugs and Organized Crime Unit (UDYCO), said at a press conference in Madrid . .

The drugs arrived from Colombia via Ecuador and the seizures took place in containers arriving at the ports of Vigo (Galicia, northwest) and Valencia (east).

Martínez pointed out that this was the largest drug exposure they had recorded.

The Vigo operation seized 7.5 tonnes hidden among frozen tuna fillets, making it the largest seizure in Galicia, a region that has traditionally served as a gateway for drugs entering Spain from Latin America. Europe.

In Valencia, 3.4 tons of cocaine were discovered hidden in secret double bottoms of containers.

Most of the 20 people arrested are Albanians, but there are also a Colombian, a Dominican and several Spaniards, including a Galician businessman who lent his fish importing business to transport the drugs, and whose identity was not revealed.

“The two operations have nothing to do with each other, the only connection between them is that we believe that behind both are organizations of Albanian origin,” Martínez Duarte explains.

The first arrests in these operations took place at the end of November and the last on Monday in Madrid.

Regarding these organizations, Commissioner Martínez Duarte said that they include the so-called ‘Balkan Cartel’, and that ‘they are central to all European police forces’.

“The Albanian mafia has been monopolizing the shipment of drugs for some time. Not only in Europe, also in Latin America. These organizations have moved to the origin and control the transit of drugs from start to finish,” he added. (JO)