British and Irish drug suspects jailed
Shipments were sent from Spain to other countries
A COURT has jailed two men and two women, one of them British and another Irish, who had been arrested in Torrevieja and Rojales for allegedly posting drugs abroad by courier.
Guardia Civil in Valencia started investigating in early 2022 when a private security guard reported suspicions that five packages could contain drugs at a courier company in Picanya, which lies to the west of the region’s capital.
The packages were found to contain 25 kilos of hashish that were destined for Ireland and the UK, according to the Guardia Civil, and the details on the shipment were false.
Initial enquiries determined they were dealing with an intensely active organised criminal gang whose principal activity was shipping drugs using this company.
In mid-December, they detected more shipments arriving at the distribution point in Picanya, in which officers found 14kg of hashish and 6kg of marijuana.
The investigation also found packages had been dropped off at other places, including the company’s branches in Murcia and Ribaroja de Túria (Valencia), which indicated that the first one had been handed in at the Torrevieja branch.
It seems that after the first shipment was seized, the gang had decided to change the branches they used in order to throw police off the trail.
Since the subsequent shipments were continually being seized, the gang decided to change again, and travelled to one in Madrid-Barajas airport with several packages of hashish and marijuana, but one of the members was discovered and arrested at one of the Guardia Civil border unit checkpoints.
The spokesman noted that the gang had tried to avoid suspicion by vacuum packing the drugs to prevent their smell from giving them away, entering false details for the delivery notes and illegally using the accounts of other clients of the courier company to send the shipments.
These accounts were only used once or twice so the client or company would not notice, and in this way they did not pay the delivery fees and the account details had no connection with the real senders, who remained anonymous.
The packages of drugs were disguised under the appearance of containing motor vehicle parts in the case of hashish, and clothing for marijuana.
As the investigation progressed, officers identified one of the members as a ringleader, who obtained the information related to the accounts and the clients’ passwords, while the other members each had their own assigned tasks.
Some were ‘senders’, in charge of obtaining the drugs from Morocco, while others were ‘receivers' of the drugs when they arrived in their destination country.
The gang was based in Torrevieja and Rojales, where officers carried out four searches in March, when they seized 65kg of hashish and 25kg of marijuana, two vehicles used to transport the drugs, machinery and plastic for sealing the packages, boxes for sending them in, scales for weighing, €4,215 in cash, electronic devices and various documentation, all valued at a total of about €60,000.
Eventually the two men and two women were arrested on suspicion of belonging to a criminal organisation, money laundering and fraud.
The suspects are aged between 35 and 45, and are British, Irish, Colombian and Romanian citizens.