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Spanish police have made their largest seizure of cocaine at sea after finding almost 10 tonnes of the drug hidden among a cargo of salt on a merchant ship off the Canary Islands.
Detectives and anti-drug prosecutors investigating a multinational criminal group alleged to be exporting “enormous quantities” of cocaine from South America to Europe had identified a suspect ship that had set off from Brazil, the Policía Nacional said in a statement on Monday.
Last week, officers from the force’s elite special group of operations boarded the vessel as it lay 332 miles (535km) off the Canary Islands, and seized almost 300 bales of cocaine that had been buried in a shipment of salt. Thirteen people were arrested and the ship, which had run out of fuel, was towed to port in Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
Video footage of the operation shows officers using shovels to dig the wrapped bales out of a vast amount of salt in the hold.
The operation, nicknamed White Tide, was carried out in collaboration with Brazilian federal police, the US Drug Enforcement Administration, the UK’s National Crime Agency, alongside French and Portuguese authorities.
The police statement said: “Thanks to this joint effort, Policía Nacional officers recovered 9,994kg of cocaine packed into 294 bundles that had been hidden among the tonnes of salt the ship was transporting, as well as a firearm that the gang was using to protect the shipment.
“This represents a decisive blow to international criminal networks involved in maritime cocaine trafficking, demonstrating the effectiveness of international police cooperation in the fight against global drug trafficking – and highlighting, once again, the ability of the Policía Nacional to act successfully against criminal organisations with a global reach.”
The previous record for the largest amount of cocaine seized by the force at sea was the 7.5 tonnes recovered from a trawler in July 1999.
In 2024, Spanish police and customs officers intercepted the largest known consignment of cocaine to reach the country, seizing more than 13 tonnes of the drug, which had been hidden in a cargo of bananas shipped by container from Ecuador.
Spanish authorities seized a total of 123 tonnes of cocaine in 2024, up from 118 tonnes in 2023 and 58 tonnes in 2022.
