(Newswire.net — December 12, 2015) — Smugglers always try to think of new ways to hide cocaine from the police and their ingenuity seems to have no limits. Forty wooden pallets, which were actually 1.5 tonnes of compressed cocaine worth 240 million pounds were seized by the Spanish Police Department in the Valencia port in Eastern Spain.
These wooden pallets arrived from Colombia on a shipping container. Spanish police stated that eleven people were arrested in a coordinated action in Spain, Britain and Dubai, along with two Colombians who are notorious for their expertise in processing cocaine into various formats with the help of chemicals. “Two of the Colombians arrested in Spain are expert ‘cooks’, deployed to our country in order to reverse the concealment process and thus access the cocaine”, the Spanish police reported.
The shipping container carrying this precious and dangerous substance arrived at Spain’s second busiest harbour on November 30 and was searched by the police who were acting on information provided from the National Crime Agency (NCA).
So what appeared to be sacks of charcoal, was in fact compressed cocaine powder which was made in the form of wooden pallets, as the forensic examination showed.
Forensic Scientist Richard Hooker of Allen Morgan Associates which provide expert evidence said, “To make the cocaine look like wooden pallets they have dissolved the white cocaine powder with a solvent or glue. It has then been placed into moulds shaped like pallets to set. When the resin dries out it then solidifies. If you mix it with dye it then gives a wood effect and giving it the appearance of dark wood. Once the dealers get it, they can then re-dissolve it and reverse the process to extract cocaine. The same process can also be used to make it look like pieces of charcoal by using charcoal powder”.
It is suspected that the group of people who were arrested in three countries had a charcoal company in Spain which was used as a cover to import cocaine and a hidden laboratory (probably in Chiva, near Valencia), where the cocaine was processed and disguised in order to be sold all over the European continent.
Greg McKenna, NCA Regional Head of Investigations said, “We believe that the charcoal company was a front for an industrial-sized lab where cocaine was extracted from pallets and charcoal, processed and repackaged for onward distribution across Europe. This seizure of cocaine, shutting down of the lab and the 11 arrests will have disrupted criminal activity across the whole of Europe”.
Another failed attempt to smuggle 300kg of cocaine occured in October when the police seized the cargo that was again on a container, this time full of pureed bananas. This container arrived in Valencia from Costa Rica.
Since Spain has remained in close relationship with its ex-colonies in South America, it is no wonder that it is used as a main point of entry for smuggling cocaine into Europe.
It must be said that smugglers’ ingenuity has increased over the years, in order to fool Spanish customs officers. They tried to smuggle cocaine in wigs, crockery sets and even within breast implants.