Spanish police have seized one ton of cocaine in Valencia’s port following a year-long investigation. Twenty people were arrested in the large-scale operation, Spanish public broadcaster RTVE reported.
Coordinated with Europol, the operation led to 17 arrests in Spain, two in Belgium, and one in France.
Alongside the cocaine, authorities confiscated virtual wallets, two firearms, eight luxury vehicles, a taser, machetes, brass knuckles, €15,000 in cash, and a truck.
The investigation revealed that suspects smuggled cocaine into shipping containers mixed with legal goods, without the knowledge of freight companies.
Some of the arrested individuals were linked to a branch of the Hells Angels gang in Belgium and were mainly responsible for overseeing the retrieval of drug shipments, Spanish police said.
The gang allegedly smuggled cocaine hidden in containers arriving from Latin America. They used so-called “spider men” — individuals who climbed container stacks and broke into them using bolt cutters or hand saws to extract the cocaine.
