The Civil Guard arrested three people at Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas Airport who allegedly transported 200 kilograms of cocaine from flights from the Dominican Republic and Colombia.
The drugs were hidden in five suitcases, distributed in 158 packages of different weights, measures and packagingand was intercepted last Sunday September 29 in the baggage claim rooms of the airport, the armed institute reported this Thursday in a press release.
The detainees, of Italian and Colombian origin and aged between 23 and 76, are accused of crime against public health.
Agents from the Tax and Border Unit of Barajas airport were responsible for intervening on the merits, as part of a routine operation framed in the fight against smuggling which was carried out through five different actions.
The ÍCARO team (Identification of Abnormal Behavior and Operational Reaction) also participated, which put into practice the risk analysis techniques carried out daily by operations in the baggage claim rooms, in which passengers and suitcases are selected to carry out more exhaustive measurements. prosecutors. Two of the seized suitcases were not claimed by any passengers.
Drugs in avocados
This is not the only anti-drug operation carried out in recent days in Madrid. As part of Operation Kindgreek, developed jointly between the Civil Guard and the National Police, a major criminal organization was dismantled, leading to the arrest of six people and with the seizure of 230 kilograms of cocaine in total.
The start of the operation took place in February 2024, when the officers who carried out the investigation detected a company, based in the town of Valdemoro (Madrid), which began carrying out a series of suspicious imports from South America.
It is possible to identify the owner of the company and the people who transported the fruit to Madrid, some of Spanish origin and others from the Dominican Republic, who would have dedicated themselves to the importation and subsequent sale of this merchandise, who were mainly lawyers.
As part of the same investigation, it was also found that the said company had also introduced several containers by sea through ports in Portugal and the Netherlands. A notable event in July of this year was the seizure of 109 kilograms of cocaine in the port of Rotherdam (Holland) hidden among a cargo of avocados, whose final destination was Madrid.
After intensifying the surveillance of different importers in the Community of Madrid, it was found that after each air shipment the goods were stored in a warehouse and evacuated the fruit that brought the drug, distribute the rest to fruit stores.
Finally, on September 13, a new shipment from the investigated company was intercepted, where the importation of two tons of avocados and where investigators managed to locate 121 kilograms of cocaine.
Following this discovery, the agents led by the very illustrious judge Mr. Adolfo Carretero Sánchez, president of Court No. 47 of Madrid and with the cooperation of the Anti-Drug Prosecutor’s Office, monitored the merchandise until his destination on the ship Vallecas where the organization kept the fruits again.
After surveillance of the ship, we noted the access to the interior of several of the people investigated, who opened the goods in search of medicines, which was already in the possession of the Security Forces and Corps after having been previously extracted.
In these moments of disbelief on the part of the members of the organization, they were arrested.in the case of four men. Subsequently, two other people were arrested in Barajas, including the administrator of the importing company, while trying to leave the country.
The detainees, six people of Spanish and Dominican nationality, were brought to justice, decreeing the imprisonment of the main defendants, thus leaving the aforementioned criminal organization dismantled.
