The “Gloria Figueroa”, a Panamanian-flagged fishing boat carrying a cargo of 4,000 kilograms of cocaine, was intercepted by the National Police, in collaboration with the Navy, while sailing approximately 500 miles to the west of the Canary Islands. and direction Galicia. Concretely, he was transporting 100 bales of cocaine of around 40 kilos each which He hoped to land in “near coordinates” towards the Galician coast.
This was confirmed by the head of the Organized Crime Response Group (GRECO) in Galicia, Emilio Rodríguez, during an appearance with journalists this Friday at the Arsenal of Las Palmas, to explain how developed this action, called “Operation Inferno”. . As he explained, the fishing boat was sailing towards the coordinates “established in the Atlantic, on the high seas, where Galician organizations They were going to send their boats to unload the goodsthe cocaine that the fishing boat was carrying.
However, Europe Press informs you that you did not specify the zone because It’s an investigation that “is open” and focused on the organization on land, which “was going to be responsible for unloading and storing on the beach”, which is why further arrests are expected to take place soon.
The ship “Gloria Figueroa” was boarded in the early hours of November 12 by members of the Special Operations Group (GEO), with the support of the Navy patrol vessel “Atalaya”, and after an investigation carried out in collaboration with the Drug Enforcement (DEA), as well as with the police of France, the Netherlands and Portugal, coordinated by CISCO and MAUC (a unit created to investigate the maritime traffic of ships in the Atlantic and which, according to him, their has brought “great successes” in recent years).
Investigation in the port of Vigo
It turns out, according to police sources, that this fishing boat had already been sanctioned by the Panamanian authorities for having committed serious offenses and that its fishing license had been withdrawn; In addition, he was monitored by agents of the National Police in the port of Vigo, “since his activities were qualified as suspected of being linked to drug trafficking“.
The head of GRECO Galicia indicated that, once there was evidence of the presence of the aforementioned ship, which was loaded with cocaine and heading towards Spain, the corresponding protocols have been activated. In this case, he stressed, “the work and the work of the Special Anti-Drug Prosecutor’s Office of the National Court were fundamental”, which is the one that coordinated with the Navy, to dispose of its ships and be able to transport the boarding early in the morning of November 12.
Regarding the approach, he stressed that it is a part that materializes the GEO through an “exquisite work”, which “only turns out good or bad, there is no way to make it regular”since they are capable of boarding a ship without the crew members “realizing it and in circumstances at sea” such as those they had to face on this occasion, with “waves of five or six meters, which often make this impossible”, if we consider I do not have the physical and psychological preparation to be able to carry out the maneuver.”
Thus, after the fishing boat was intercepted on the high seas, Officers arrested the 15 crew members of the samewhose captain is of French nationality and the rest is Ecuadorian.
This operation, which remains open, made it possible to seize more than 4,000 kilos of cocaine that they would have a gross value approximately 80 million euros without reducing what, as the government delegate to the Canary Islands, Anselmo Pestana, pointed out this Friday, is an amount that could quadruple its market value.
Change of strategy
Emilio Rodríguez also highlighted that currently efforts are being made to analyze with whom drug traffickers or Galician organizations could have links, because, he emphasized, in recent years “There has been a change in the strategy of large organizations.
In this sense, he indicated that The drug “does not leave” directly loaded on this type of fishing boatbut rather it is the ships of the South American organizations themselves which “arrive within a few miles of the coast, so it is often very difficult to determine the place where the cocaine comes from”. The organizations use boats that, although this is not the case, carry out legal fishing work and take advantage of this work to load cocaine.
For his part, the Senior Chief of the National Police of the Canary Islands, Jesús María Gómez, emphasized that today “police work cannot be understood without the perspective, without the optics, of international police cooperation”, And recognized the support that the DEA provides them for “a large number” of operations carried out in this area of the Atlantic.
Finally, the government delegate to the Canary Islands, Anselmo Pestana, underlined the “good move” that the National Police observed this operation and it is one of those carried out by the Civil Guard as well as by the National Police or the Tax Agency in an “important fight” against drug trafficking.
