Drug smugglers lose millions and their marbles

THE PROVINCIAL court has convicted four people accused of smuggling methamphetamine into Spain using a marble import company in Novelda.

They were found guilty of four public health offences for substances that cause serious harm and of simulating international trade between businesses.

Each one was sentenced to 11 years in prison and fined a total of €7,122,152, although a fifth defendant was acquitted due to lack of evidence and the four others were cleared of belonging to a criminal organisation.

The court considered it proven that they had conspired to reactivate the company Novelda Stone SL, which had closed down in 2008.

They used it as a front to camouflage smuggling of drugs from Mexico hidden in blocks of marble.

According to the ruling, two of them were in charge of the dealings in Mexico, the third dealt with the import procedures in Spain and the fourth of hiding the marble in a quarry in La Romana.

The court noted that Novelda Stone, set up in 2001 and relaunched in 2018 with one of the convicts as sole administrator and its headquarters at his home, was really ‘a front company without any real activity, that lacked the means and infrastructure for the legal business of importing blocks of marble’.

It concluded the four accused had used the company ‘to justify importation of marble blocks from Mexico and in this way bring the intoxicating substance hidden inside them to Spain’.

The ruling specified that they had organised 10 importations between 2018 and 2019 of more than 15 containers of marble with the drug inside, until the police investigation used GPS trackers on the containers and telephone taps to gather enough evidence to arrest them.