Murcia drug dealers arrested for trying to ship marijuana to Germany in furniture
It’s just one of several international marijuana smuggling operations that have been taken down in Murcia recently
The international marijuana smuggling trade in the Region of Murcia seems to be in full swing lately, as evidenced by arrests by police of criminals using ingenious methods to try and disguise their contraband.
In one recent operation, codenamed ‘Posking’, the Guardia Civil discovered a shipment of marijuana hidden inside furniture which was destined to be shipped to Germany.
Police were first alerted to the scheme in March, when, as part of routine parcel control services carried out in transport agencies, they detected several packages of furniture destined for the German city of Hamburg which contained “narcotic substances”.
The tables and desks, which were sent by a resident of the Murcia locality of Alguazas, had handmade double bottoms with up to 24 packages of vacuum-packed marijuana buds hidden inside, which had a total weight of 13.5 kilograms and which were seized.
Two people believed to be behind the smuggling operation have been arrested, and one of them already had a warrant out for his arrest on other charges.
In a separate operation, Operation Zelazo, a man who was wanted in Poland has been tracked down in Cartagena thanks to an investigation of illicit marijuana cultivation and smuggling carried out by the Guardia Civil in Cartagena and Mazarrón.
The Polish man arrested was charged with the crimes of cultivation, processing and trafficking of drugs, electricity fraud (by siphoning off power to grow marijuana plants) and membership of a criminal group. During the operation, the Guardia Civil found that this detainee had used at least two false identities, apparently to avoid being linked to his previous criminal record, also related to drug trafficking in Poland.
In yet another drugs bust, Customs Surveillance officers in Murcia recently found 500 plastic bags of vacuum-packed marijuana weighing 1 kilo each underneath a shipment of lettuce in a freight lorry that was headed up to the port of Bilbao in northern Spain, to be shipped to the port of Rosslare, in Ireland.
The driver and sole occupant of the lorry, a resident of Cieza aged 47, was investigated for using a website called ‘Timocom’, which takes advantage of the empty space in HGV drivers’ trucks to undertake cut-price shipments, to smuggle drugs across international borders.
The half tonne of drugs he was carrying, once introduced into the black market, would have had an estimated street value of just over 3.5 million euros, or even more since, after having been analysed, it was found to be a high-quality variety of marijuana with a higher value on the illegal European market.
Images: Guardia Civil
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