The National Police and the Tax Agency have seized 534 kilos of cocaine that were hidden in the double bottom of a motorhome sent to Spain from South America, with all the necessary and typical equipment to spend a leisure and adventure vacation outdoors: the caravan itself, two canoes, a support for several bicycles… The drug, as detailed by the Police on Wednesday, was destined for retail in the Basque Country, but it was seized in the port of Barcelona, where the drug had been expected to be sent by this method for two years. Two people have been arrested.
Operation Keja-Salt Eye has been in hibernation for almost three years, as drug traffickers had begun planning this stash in November 2019. The investigators then learned, after the follow-up of two people, that the gang had bought an already equipped motorhome and had shipped it by boat to Latin America, with the aim of returning it to Spain loaded with packages of cocaine.
Travel restrictions due to COVID delayed the plans of the network, which has waited almost two and a half years until this summer to execute the shipment, according to the government delegate in the Basque Country, Denis Itxaso, who presented the stash this morning in the complex of the National Police of Basauri (Bizkaia). “The value of drugs in the retail market,” the delegate said, “has risen to more than 60 million euros and its main destination was the Basque Country.”
The motorhome was intercepted in the port of Barcelona by agents of the National Police Force and the Customs Surveillance Service of the Tax Agency, who verified that the vehicle was driving 534 kilos of cocaine in 333 packages, hidden just below the cockpit of the motorhome. The drug has turned out to be “of great purity”, according to the results of the narcotest to which it was subjected.
Itxaso explained that the operation “is the result of a long, complex and laborious investigation carried out by the Drug and Organized Crime Unit (UDYCO) of the Superior Headquarters of National Police in the Basque Country and Customs Surveillance of the Tax Agency in the Basque Country.
