Last Wednesday at six in the morning there were 325 police officers distributed between Almería, Granada and Huelva waiting for a signal. There were four drone teams, a helicopter, several special intervention groups, information officers. The objective, after the ordinance, was to carry out 24 registrations and searches simultaneously in homes attributable to a group of drug traffickers. The epicenter was located in the capital of Almería, where the leaders of the criminal organization that was intended to be dismantled were based. So it was. As a result, 4,500 marijuana plants, 600 kilos of buds and 400 lottery tickets were seized for money laundering. Also 20 firearms, mostly weapons of war, which the gang used to defend their goods and resell them to other drug traffickers, according to police sources. Finally, 22 people were arrested – 19 Spanish and 3 Moroccan – who were brought to justice. The Almería anti-drug prosecutor’s office has requested prison for all of them.
The operation, called Kremlin-Zakais the second part of another which took place last April in the municipality of Pechina (4,400 inhabitants) in Almeria, under the name Pentagon-Orenev and this had started two years earlier. On that occasion, in addition to arresting 25 people – 15 of whom were jailed – the agents found more weapons than expected: 23, including short weapons, long weapons and even a rocket launcher. “Our intention now is to move on to the next step: to see where the weapons came from and what their channel was,” the investigators explained at the time. That’s exactly what they did: the analysis of all the documentation and all the electronic devices analyzed allowed the opening of a new investigation involving other members of the same organization, the very ones who were arrested this Wednesday. They are all part of the same family clan in the area, which differentiates drug trafficking in Almería compared to other areas such as the Costa del Sol. “There are many people from Europe who come to different parts of the province to do business, but they do not reside here as happens in Malaga,” say the same sources.
The police work carried out since the spring made it possible to verify that the members of the network who had not been arrested continued their two main activities. On the one hand, cultivation, which they carried out in different houses in Almería, Granada and Huelva. They then carried out all the subsequent stages – leaf, prick, shoot and pollen – and then vacuum-packed it and sent it to the Netherlands, from where it was distributed throughout Central Europe. In exchange they received cash – almost 300,000 euros in cash were found – or, in some cases, payments in kind. Sometimes it was exchanged for other types of drugs and, other times, for firearms. “The first objective is to arm ourselves to defend ourselves from other criminal organizations. There is no longer a hideout that is not defended by someone with long weapons”, explain sources in the investigation.
Most of the weapons come from the Baltic countries and areas close to Ukraine and Russia. The same sources underline that once the group saw that it had access to these weapons of war, it also decided to traffic and resell them. “The main consumers are organized criminal organizations that operate in southern Spain and are linked to drugs,” underline police sources.
It is a business which, like that of marijuana – the price of which in Northern Europe is multiplied by five or six – is very profitable: a weapon that could cost 6 thousand euros could be sold for 30 thousand or 40 thousand euros more. “The margin is very high,” the researchers point out.
The ease of access to weapons and the fact that many of the suspects had criminal records for violent crimes led to a huge police deployment on Wednesday, supported by the General Commissariat of Information, the provincial police stations of Almería, Granada and Huelva, several police intervention units (UIP), the Technical Intervention Operational Group (GOIT), dog guides, four drones, a helicopter and numerous prevention and reaction units (UPR).
During the 24 searches (in addition to the 50 carried out in the first phase of the operation), over 3,000 marijuana plants and 600 kilos of buds ready to be shipped were seized – worth around four million euros – and eleven long weapons, nine short weapons as well as abundant ammunition of different calibers. Furthermore 130 thousand euros in cash and almost 400 tenths of this year’s national Christmas lottery – one of the methods for laundering dirty money – and 14 electronic devices, including high-end mobile phones. Also seized were four vehicles, a watch worth 12 thousand euros and various materials and tools for the cultivation and processing of marijuana. The 22 people arrested have already been brought to justice, the latest this Friday. The Almería anti-drug prosecutor’s office has requested prison for all of them.
