A total of almost 2.5 tonnes of cocaine has been lost by drug-trafficking networks in just two days, according to the latest seizures linked to the Port of Valencia. The huge quantities are believed to have been brought into Spain from South America through increasingly sophisticated trafficking routes.
So far, only one person has been arrested. The suspect is the driver of the truck carrying the latest shipment of cocaine, which was seized on Friday, October 2. He was sent to prison the same day.
The 1,420 kilos of cocaine that arrived in Valencia on a ferry from Ibiza are in addition to another 862 kilos seized on September 27 inside a container that had arrived from Ecuador.
Truck arriving from Ibiza stopped at Valencia port
According to information released on Wednesday by the Spanish Tax Agency (AEAT), the driver was arrested after his truck disembarked in Valencia following the ferry crossing from Ibiza.
Customs officers selected the vehicle for an external inspection using the Medusa van, a mobile scanning unit used daily to check goods entering the port and other border points.
A random customs inspection
According to the AEAT, officers from the Customs Surveillance Service, whose duties include detecting drug shipments, were waiting for the ferry to arrive as part of a series of random inspections targeting cargo vehicles.
Among the trucks and vans selected was a refrigerated vehicle carrying 7,500 kilos of cargo. The truck had no external markings, which raised the suspicions of the officers.
A radiological scan of the vehicle revealed two clearly different types of cargo inside the refrigerated box.
Around half of the truck was loaded with empty plastic crates commonly used to transport fruit and vegetables. However, beside them, officers could see another type of object: solid bales whose size and appearance matched those typically used to transport cocaine in large-scale maritime drug trafficking operations.
Truck driver jailed over alleged cocaine trafficking
The Customs Surveillance officers diverted the truck to their facilities inside the port area, where they carried out a full physical inspection. The operation involved opening the doors and examining the cargo directly.
When officers opened the first of the large bags, they found dozens of small packages roughly the size of bricks and wrapped in cellophane — the characteristic packaging used for cocaine shipments from producer countries.
Several packages were opened and all contained the same substance: a compact white material. To confirm what appeared to be cocaine, officers took a small sample and subjected it to a drug test.
The substance immediately turned blue, confirming that it was indeed cocaine.
The driver, George C., a 48-year-old Romanian national, was then arrested and taken to National Police cells at the Zapadores complex, as Customs does not operate its own detention facilities.
The alleged trafficker denied knowing what the truck was carrying. He told investigators that he had simply been instructed to collect the vehicle and drive it to Valencia.
He was brought before the duty judge on Sunday and appeared before the judge presiding over Court No. 2 of the Investigating Section of the Valencia Court of Instance.
At the prosecutor’s request, the judge ordered pre-trial detention without bail, charging the driver with an extremely serious drug-trafficking offence because of the substantial quantity of cocaine involved.
Did the cocaine arrive in Ibiza by sailboat or inside a shipping container?
For now, the Romanian truck driver is the only person arrested in connection with the shipment.
Investigators will now attempt to establish who was behind the operation and how the cocaine reached Ibiza. According to Customs, the drugs arrived on the island “by sea”.
At this stage, however, it remains unclear whether the cocaine was unloaded somewhere on Ibiza from a sailboat, or whether it arrived inside a container at the island’s commercial port, hidden among legitimate cargo.
The latter method is known in international drug trafficking as “lost hook”, “blind hook” or rip-off.
Under this system, criminal organisations conceal drugs within legitimate commercial shipments without the knowledge of either the exporter or importer.
For now, investigators do not know how the cocaine reached the Pityusic Islands.
Second major cocaine seizure at the Port of Valencia
The seizure of almost 1.5 tonnes of cocaine came just five days after another major drug shipment was intercepted at the Port of Valencia.
In that case, authorities discovered 862 kilos of cocaine inside a container aboard the Cape Scott, a vessel that had departed from the port of Guayaquil, Ecuador, on September 3.
The significant detail in that operation was that the container had been contaminated while the ship was at sea.
The method was developed and exploited for years by what became known as the Balkan Cartel, an umbrella term for criminal groups that emerged following the end of the Balkan Wars.
Over the past decade, these networks have taken control of a large share of the wholesale importation and distribution of cocaine entering Europe.
Drug couriers and cocaine bales lifted aboard ships at sea
From 2010 onwards, Balkan criminal organisations managed to infiltrate up to 20% of the workforce of the world’s largest shipping company, MSC, according to investigators.
MSC was founded in 1970 by Neapolitan ferry captain Gianluigi Aponte, who remains its chairman, and has been headquartered in Geneva since 1978.
This access allowed criminal networks to introduce thousands of tonnes of cocaine during ocean voyages. Drug bales packed into nets were brought alongside ships and then hauled aboard with the help of drug-involved crew members, most of them of Montenegrin or Albanian nationality.
Using this system, Balkan criminal organisations helped flood European and US ports with cocaine for years, hiding shipments within legitimate cargo through so-called “rip-off” operations.
The drugs travel alongside legitimate goods without the knowledge of the exporter or importer and are then recovered at the destination port by specialists working for the criminal organisation.
Among the groups operating this way was the organisation known as the Valencia Port Cartel, which was dismantled in September 2025 during Operation Spider.
The latest seizure in Valencia now raises a new question for investigators: who sent the 1,420 kilos of cocaine to Ibiza, and how did the shipment reach the island before being transported to Valencia?