Portuguese police have made a record seizure of almost nine tonnes of cocaine after intercepting a “narco-sub” off the Azores carrying what is thought to be the largest shipment of the drug ever found on one of the Europe-bound, semi-submersible vessels.
The Portuguese Judicial police said its officers had confiscated the haul in a recent joint operation with the country’s navy and air force that had been conducted in coordination with the US Drug Enforcement Administration and the UK National Crime Agency.
The intercepted vessel eventually sank, taking 35 bales of cocaine with it to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. The four men on board – three Colombians and a Venezuelan – were arrested.
“The vessel, which had come from Latin America and was crewed by four foreign nationals, was carrying 300 bales of cocaine,” the Portuguese police said in a statement. “The interception of the semi-submersible occurred at sea, approximately 230 nautical miles from the Azores, under extremely difficult and dangerous conditions due to the current adverse weather conditions.”
A police spokesperson told Agence France-Presse that the operation had resulted in “the biggest seizure of cocaine ever in Portugal”. According to Portuguese media reports, the impounded drugs could be worth up to €600m (£520m).
In March last year, Portuguese police located and intercepted another narco-sub off the Azores that was ferrying almost 6.5 tonnes of cocaine to Europe.
Although semi-submersible vehicles have been used regularly in Colombia and other parts of South and Central America since the 1980s, they were not detected in European waters until 2006, when an abandoned sub was found in an estuary in the north-west Spanish region of Galicia.
The first full-laden narco-sub found in European waters was recovered from an inlet in Galicia in 2019, where it had been scuttled along with its cargo of three tonnes of cocaine.
Four months ago, Spanish police seized 3.6 tonnes of cocaine that had been brought to Galicia by narco-sub.
In an interview with the Guardian last month, the head of the central narcotics brigade of Spain’s National police said plummeting cocaine prices were leading drug gangs to reuse the narco-subs they would once have ditched at the end of a one-way journey from South America.
“The price of the merchandise is really, really low, so the organisations have, logically, had a rethink,” said Alberto Morales. “Rather than sink them, what they do now is unload the merchandise and set up a refuelling platform at sea so that the semi-submersibles can head back to the countries they came from and make as many journeys as possible.”
Spanish police on Monday separately announced they had dismantled a massive and highly sophisticated cocaine smuggling operation that used powerful speed boats and offshore bases in the Atlantic to bring more than 57 tonnes of the drug into Europe over the past year.
The year-long investigation, led by the National police, has resulted in 105 arrests and the confiscation of 10.4 tonnes of cocaine and the seizure of 30 boats.
Officers discovered that gang members based in southern Spain, Portugal, the Canary Islands and Morocco were using the cover of dark to set off in speedboats and rendezvous with supply and storage ships. The drugs were loaded on to the speedboats, some of which had a speed of 40 knots, and brought back to mainland Spain and the Canaries.
“They created real aquatic platforms where drivers would remain at sea for over a month at a time, carrying out several successive operations,” the force said in a statement.
“They had their own fuel storage facilities, with evidence showing the use of over 100,000 litres. Smaller vessels were responsible for supplying gasoline, provisions, communication equipment, and even clothing for the couriers who escorted the drugs from the mother ship to our country.”
Investigators also discovered the lengths to which the gang was prepared to go to in order to keep its activities secret: the family of one member who died was paid €12m to “guarantee their silence and avoid any suspicion of criminal activities”.
