Spain smashes concrete block drug smugglers

MADRID, Dec 14, 2021 (AFP) – Spanish police said Tuesday they had smashed a ring which smuggled “huge amounts” of cocaine and methamphetamine from Mexico to Europe hidden inside concrete blocks.

The investigation triggered the seizure in the Dutch port city of Rotterdam in 2019 of 2.5 tonnes of methamphetamine, Europe’s biggest ever haul of the drug, Spanish police said.

The ring, which had ties to Mexican drug cartel Beltran-Leyva, “used a novel way to smuggle drugs which consisted in creating hidden compartments in concrete blocks, making it undetectable in port controls,” the statement said.

Once the concrete blocks arrived in Spain, the gang would extract the drugs from the concrete blocks and ship them to other European nations.

The investigation suggests that Mexican cartels “were trying to ‘flood’ the European market” with methamphetamine, the statement said.

Police arrested 16 people as part of the operation, which began in 2017 and was carried out in cooperation with the European Union’s law enforcement agency Europol.

They also seized just under 1.4 tonnes of cocaine and 17,000 litres (4,500 gallons) of chemicals that could be used for washing cocaine and producing synthetic drugs.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has warned that methamphetamine, a highly addictive synthetic drug, is one of the greatest threats to global health.

Spain’s close ties with its former colonies in Latin America, a major cocaine-producing region, have made it a key entry point for drugs bound for Europe.

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