The Jumilla operation , in which the Civil Guard has intervened more than 16.5 million euros in cash, more than 1,600 kilos of cocaine and arrested 28 people , has allowed unraveling to what extent drug trafficking networks were infiltrated in the port of Algeciras (Cadiz).
With it, the Civil Guard has been able to solve a mystery that has frustrated investigators for a long time when they opened a suspicious container that arrived at the port of Algeciras and in which they did not find the drug they expected to find in the registry.
The key was fundamentally in an employee of the port, known among the members of the criminal organizations dedicated to the trafficking of cocaine through the Algecireno compound as “Messi de la Torre” , who due to his work had punctual and permanent information on the location of the containers coming from South America and also from when the Security Forces and Bodies requested to inspect them when they arrived in Algeciras.
He is one of the 28 detainees in this operation, along with other port workers, such as a porter, a veterinarian, four agents from the Auxiliary Maritime Service, a freight forwarder, two carriers or two businessmen with import firms who, due to the amount years that they had been operating in Algeciras, they had already generated confidence and passed through a so-called “green circuit”, with fewer inspections.
Among those arrested , in addition to a former PP councilor from Algeciras , there are also people who were in charge of laundering money in tax havens, through various companies.
Among them a Spaniard who fled from justice in 2017 when the Civil Guard seized 3,500 kilos of cocaine in Estepona (Malaga), and who was arrested at his residence in Amsterdam (Holland).
According to the head of the Algeciras Command, Francisco Almansa, today, the investigations of this important operation began last August, as a result of one of the operations that did not go well, but that made it possible to detect contacts and meetings.
After almost a year of investigations, with the support of the Investigation Court number 3 of Algeciras and the Anti-Drug Prosecutor of the Civil Guard, the agents decided to take action on April 29 when they learned that the criminal organization intended to introduce a large consignment of cocaine hidden among legal merchandise.
That is how in the back of a container loaded with frozen mackerel they found 1,616 kilos of cocaine that would have reached a value of 48 million euros on the black market.
From there, this week, the Civil Guard has carried out 40 home searches in the towns of Algeciras, San Roque, Marbella, Malaga, Ayamonte and Getxo, in which 16.5 million euros were intervened, the largest amount of cash seized in Spain in the last ten years.
The surprise for the agents came in two homes in Algeciras where eleven million euros were found in sports bags under a bed, in a closet or in a home gym, without any care.
Investigators have long been accustomed in the Campo de Gibraltar to drug “nurseries”, where drugs are hidden while waiting for them to reach their destination. But never before had they come across a “money nursery.”
The agents have been surprised by how little care they had with such an amount of money in houses, without any fear of robbery.
The money, according to Almansa, was kept to make drug payments to the networks or to “buy” people who were supposed to help them and gives an idea that the organization had the means to introduce several containers with drugs at the same time, under cover of a port with as much traffic intensity as Algeciras.
In addition, assets valued at more than five million euros in companies and real estate valued at seven million have been seized.
In addition to the Algeciras Command, the Anticorruption Group of the European Center against Economic and Financial Crime of Europol, the Coordination Body against Drug Trafficking, the Central Operational Unit, with the support of the Regional Center for Analysis and Intelligence against Drug Trafficking and the Commands of Cadiz, Malaga, Huelva, Vizcaya, Rapid Action Group, Reserve and Security Group and Special Intervention Unit.
“We don’t know how many containers they have been able to put in,” commented the head of the Algeciras Command, who pointed out that the importing companies involved had been operating “for quite some time.”
