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Tavira cocaine smugglers - ringleaders arrested in the Netherlands

cocaineSpanish police announced the arrest of the Dutch ringleaders of an international drugs network that brought cocaine into Portugal and Spain.

Last September’s arrests and the seizure of 1,300 kilos of the drug in Tavira was just the start of an international operation that finally has tracked down and arrested the Dutchman who was behind the well disciplined ring and his second-in-command.

The head of the gang was arrested in the Netherlands by members of the Spanish police, in collaboration with the Dutch authorities. Two other group members also were arrested, both Dutch.

The police searched three houses and seized documents relating to the criminal organisation that operated in Portugal, Spain and the Netherlands. The usual accoutrements were seized at the same time: a rifle, money, a note counting machine and mobile phones with encryption software.  

In September 2014 the Dutch ringleader had organised a huge shipment which ended up landing in Tavira but the police were waiting and nine people subsequently were arrested of Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch nationality.

According to Spanish police, the Dutchman had been in contact with a group of Spanish drug traffickers in mid-2104 to coordinate the safe importation of a drug shipment coming from Latin America hidden in a yacht.

The Spanish gang, based in Huelva and Seville, then contacted a group of Portuguese drug traffickers in the Faro area to arrange for the drugs to be landed in the Algarve. The Spanish gang was unaware that its members had been under surveillance for the previous year.

The two main men in the deal, one of them the leader, are 48 and 61-year-old Dutchmen and live in Baarm and Arnhem respectively.

Both men narrowly escaped arrest last September last year as they had slipped back to the Netherlands a few days before the drugs were seized in the Algarve.

The police waited for the shipment to be unloaded and arrested gang members with rucksacks of cocaine in their car boots, a total of 600Kgs.  Another 700Kgs was collected at a  warehouse near Faro, packed in rucksacks and ready to be transported across the border.

The seizure in Tavira was one of the largest of 2014 in Portugal, indeed in Europe, with a market value of €80 million.

The last of the gang, the leaders, now await charges and trial in Spain where the prisons are not quite as comfortable as in the Netherland.

http://www.algarvedailynews.com/news/3380-algarve-cocaine-seizure-valued-at-80-million

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