A Spanish police inspector displays a cocaine-impregnated fruit box at a press conference in Madrid. Photograph: Fernando Villar/EPA
Spain

Smugglers impregnated cardboard with cocaine, Spanish police say

Eighteen people arrested over scheme in which chemists were sent to extract drug from boxes

Sam Jones in Madrid
Thu 14 May 2020 07.40 EDT

Spanish police have broken up an international gang that smuggled cocaine into Europe from Colombia by impregnating it into the cardboard used in boxes carrying pineapples and limes, and then sending chemists to extract it.

A year-long international operation led by officers from Spain’s national police resulted in the arrest of 18 people in Spain, Bulgaria, the Netherlands and Colombia, and the seizure of a tonne of cocaine.

The investigation began when police focused on the illegal activities of a man nicknamed “the Surgeon” – a doctor previously arrested for drug-trafficking, and who once treated the footballer Diego Maradona.

Officers noticed that the doctor was using his clinic and other places as venues for negotiations with other people connected to the inquiry.

They then came across evidence of an organisation that was smuggling large quantities of cocaine into Europe, and that had been in touch with the Castañas drug gang that operates on the southern coast of Spain.

Cardboard boxes for legal shipments of pineapples and limes from Colombia were impregnated with cocaine between the layers of paper when the boxes were manufactured.

“Small quantities of the drug – never more than 100g – were placed in each box and later extracted by complicated chemical processes in the gang’s own laboratories,” Spanish police said.

“The gang’s chemists were then sent from Colombia to Spain, where they stayed until they were dispatched to Bulgaria and the Netherlands, where they set about extracting the cocaine. Once their job was done, they returned to Spain and then to Colombia.” The cocaine was distributed throughout Europe.

In January this year, officers got wind of an important shipment bound for Greece: 5,016 boxes of limes and 1,660 boxes of pineapples.

“Using international police cooperation mechanisms, Bulgarian police and prosecutors then tracked the shipment to a warehouse in Sofia where the legal and illegal imports were due to be separated, with the contaminated cardboard bound for the purpose-built lab.”

The drugs were seized and arrests were made in Europe and Colombia. A further eight international arrest warrants have been issued by Spain’s highest criminal court.

In addition to the tonne of cocaine confiscated in Bulgaria, Dutch authorities have seized more than 1.2 tonnes of compressed cardboard and more than 1,000 litres of the chemicals used to extract the cocaine.

Show more
Show more
Show more
Show more