Thirteen of the seventeen arrested in the searches carried out on Saturday, the last day of the operation on the ground on Ibiza for operation ‘Dragon Ball‘ against drug trafficking, have been imprisoned, while four have been released, the Guardia Civil reported. 15 of them are Italians and the other two are Ecuadorians, according to the Guardia Civil. Those arrested had were brought to court on Monday.
The Guardia Civil made 17 arrests on Saturday on Ibiza – in addition to 3 others in Malaga and 1 in Tenerife – in an operation aimed at dismantling a network involved in drug trafficking and money laundering, the third on the island in less than a month. The operation began on Tuesday and continued on Wednesday, to finish off this blow to drug trafficking with the activation of a second phase on Saturday. In total, three days of searches on the island in less than a week.
With the eleven arrests made on Wednesday – in which six Albanian citizens, two Italians, one Hungarian, one Argentinean and one of African origin, whose nationality has not been specified – were arrested, the balance of the operation on the island reaches 28 arrests.
The agents carried out searches in several places in the city of Ibiza -among them, a building on the seafront-, as well as in points of the municipalities of Santa Eulària, Sant Josep and Sant Antoni.
It should be recalled that this macro operation is directed against an Albanian organization and Italian links in Spain of the ‘Ndrangheta, the Calabrian mafia, with branches in parts of the country and abroad.
Ibiza has been the epicenter of the last phase of the operation ‘Dragon Ball’, according to the statement released by the Guardia Civil. The island has been the scene of 38 of the 42 searches that the armed forces have carried out since Tuesday last week in Spain, while two have taken place in Malaga, one in Barcelona and another in Tenerife. In addition, hideouts have been located in wooded passages on the island of Ibiza (everything indicates that the police deployment in a road from Camí Vell de Sant Mateu towards the Polígono de Montecristo would confirm this final point).
The result: 32 detainees of Italian, Albanian and Hungarian nationality; the seizure of drugs worth 4.1 million euros; immobilized real estate worth approximately 22 million euros; 23 high-end vehicles seized; 330.330,000 euros in cash seized; three firearms and luxury items seized, as well as documents that “could be related to the laundering of money derived from criminal activities”.
The dismantled Albanian organization supplied its Italian collaborator with firearms and drugs on the island of Ibiza. Both organizations invested their respective profits in real estate in the main tourist destinations in Europe, including Ibiza.
Huge drug seizure
In weight, the list of substances seized is as follows: 18 kilos of methamphetamine with which 870,000 ecstasy pills could have been manufactured; 4.5 kilos of cocaine and a cannabis plantation with 600 marijuana plants, in addition to “significant quantities of other substances”.
116 current accounts and 15 ‘high standing’ properties used for money laundering have also been blocked. Among the seized objects, luxury watches (Bulgari, Rolex and Cartier), jewelry, documents related to foreign bank accounts, false identity documents, frequency inhibitors, a multitude of cell phones, USB sticks, tablets and other electronic devices have been seized.
The coordination of this operation has needed to be international. The Guardia Civil collaborated with the Carabinieri and the Guardia di Finanza, as well as with the support of the DIA (Direzione Investigativa Antimafia) and specialized personnel of the ISF4@ON project for the fight against mafia groups.
About 400 agents of the Guardia Civil in Ibiza, Malaga, Barcelona and Tenerife have participated in the operation, which was carried out in two phases: one on Tuesday 13th and the other on Saturday 17th. The deployment designed to carry out the searches included assault units, drone pilots and sophisticated equipment for the detection of hidden drug stashes, all under the direction of the coordination center established by the Civil Guard Headquarters of the Balearic Islands.
Europol has contributed to the investigation with the AP ITOC project, for the analysis of Italian mafia-style organized crime based in Italy, affecting other European Union countries, through which financial support and technical advice has been given to Guardia Civil investigators. A large amount of information has been analyzed during the investigation, and the results of the analysis have been shared via Siena and during the operational meetings held at Eurojust.
The methods of the ‘Ndrangheta
The dismantled criminal organization of Italian origin is linked to the ‘Ndrangheta, an organization dedicated to drug trafficking on an international scale. In its logistics, it employed drug laboratories and hidden warehouses, and used vehicles equipped with sophisticated concealment systems and boats to transport cocaine. The drugs were mainly destined for Italy and Spain, and came directly from South America.
The members of this organization, according to the Guardia Civil, are known for their use of violence: they use methods such as torture and have even committed murders in Italy. During the investigation, the possession of firearms by the detainees in Ibiza has been discovered.
Some of its members residing in Spain have been related to extortion cases in Italy, in addition to carrying out money laundering activities in Spain. This organization, in the present investigation, is charged with the seizure of 1,500 kilos of cocaine in the province of Malaga, on April 20th, 2020.
For the full article, please visit Diario de Ibiza website here.