Spain seizes record 9.5 tonnes of cocaine from Ecuador

Spanish police and customs on Friday announced the seizure of nearly 9.5 tonnes of cocaine from Ecuador, in what they described as the country’s biggest-ever haul of the drug.

Officers found the narcotic on Wednesday stashed in banana crates inside a refrigerated container in the southern port of Algeciras, one of Europe’s busiest ports, they said in a joint statement.

“We are facing the largest seizure of cocaine in Spain,” Jose Carlos Arobes, a top official at Spain’s tax agency which runs customs inspections, told a news conference.

Prior to this seizure, Spain’s biggest cocaine bust was of 8.7 tonnes in 2018, also found in a supposed banana container in Algeciras, which was loaded in Colombia.

The authorities said the shipment seized this week was due to be delivered in Portugal, from where it would be distributed across Europe.

Its intended recipients were major criminal networks in Europe, the statement said.

The logos of more than 30 European criminal groups which had been destined to take delivery of the cargo were found inside.

“What these groups do is a partial investment, they come together to be able to make a shipment,” Alberto Morales, a chief inspector with Spain’s drugs and organised crime unit UDYCO told the news conference.

“A shipment of this volume implies that they have already successfully made previous shipments,” he added.

Many of the packages were branded with swastikas and the word “Hitler”, similar to a consignment of cocaine that was intercepted in Peru en route to Belgium in May this year.

The drugs had come from Guayaquil, the Ecuadoran port city known as a springboard for South American drugs heading to the United States and Europe.

– ‘Unprecedented blow’ –

The operation is “an unprecedented blow for one of the biggest criminal organisations at world level in cocaine distribution,” the statement said, without identifying the group.

No arrests have been made so far but Morales said the investigation “is still open”.

The organisation which undertook the transport was able to send 40 containers a month to Europe thanks to a vast commercial network and also used Spain’s northwestern port of Vigo, the investigators said.

The authorities said the organisations operated through an international banana trading company based in Ecuador’s port of Machala.

“From there they sent the merchandise in maritime containers to different companies in our country controlled by members of the criminal network itself,” the statement said.

In the last few years, Ecuador has become a key player in the regional cocaine trade as drug trafficking from Colombia and Peru expands into the Andean country, taking advantage of lax security in ports on its Pacific coast.

The drug trade has spurred a wave of violence. Ecuador’s murder rate since 2018 has quadrupled, kidnappings are rife, and a string of clashes between rival drug gangs has claimed at least 430 lives in Ecuadoran prisons since 2021.

Spain’s proximity to North Africa, a key source of hashish, and its close ties with former colonies in Latin America, the world’s main cocaine-producing region, have made it a portal for drug-smuggling into Europe.