MADRID (Reuters) – Spanish police in the northwestern port of Vigo seized 7.5 tonnes of cocaine from South America hidden inside frozen tuna fish due to be distributed across Europe, it said on Tuesday.
It was the biggest drugs bust by volume in the history of Galicia, the Atlantic region whose rough coastline – Spain’s longest – has been used to smuggle drugs for decades, police said.
In a second operation, police also found 3.5 tonnes of cocaine hidden in shipping containers in the Eastern port of Valencia.
A total of 20 people belonging to two organisations of Balkan origin have been arrested, police said, in what they described as a “major blow” to one Europe’s most powerful distribution networks.
An import company was set up by the smuggling network to trade frozen fish and seafood internationally as well as investing in real estate, police said.
It said that during months of surveillance, its officers determined that the firm was covering up its involvement in drug smuggling by sending a voluminous flow of containers by sea from a variety of companies at origin with the Iberian Peninsula always as the destination.
(Reporting by Emma Pinedo, editing by Aislinn Laing and Louise Heavens)
