The sarcophagus that traveled from Costa Rica to Malaga filled with 720 kilos of cocaine

The drugs were hidden inside the aluminum chest and camouflaged among 19 tons of scrap metal, which was later transported by road to Alcalá de los Gazules.

First they used a small excavator. Then metal tools. They rummaged through 19 tons of scrap metal with them to finally find a sarcophagus with thick aluminum walls. They opened it with a powerful shear and found some rectangular packages inside. They were subjected to some tests and, bingo, they had found the cocaine they were looking for. Specifically, 720 kilos had been sent from Costa Rica to the port of Malaga inside a container and, from there, had been transported by road in a truck to Alcalá de los Gazules, a town in Cádiz. Eight people – all Spanish – have been arrested in a joint operation by the Civil Guard, National Police and Customs Surveillance Service and seven of them have already been sent to provisional prison. Two of those arrested were awaiting imprisonment after being sentenced to eight years in prison following their arrest for similar events in the port of Algeciras in 2018.

Built to be completely watertight, the metal sarcophagus was intended not only to store the drugs, but also to go unnoticed as one of the thousands of scrap fragments—most of them engine parts—that were transported in a port container from Costa Rica. to Spain. Up to 600 packages of cocaine - each weighing 1.2 kilograms - traveled the more than 8,000 kilometers that separate both countries, hidden inside and, in turn, hidden among the 19 tons of aluminum fragments in which investigators later found They had to look for it.

The plan was hatched by an organization based in Campo de Gibraltar. For months, agents have been monitoring the movements of the members of this gang, among which were old acquaintances of the police forces due to their background in drug trafficking. Two of those investigated had been sentenced to almost eight years in prison but were awaiting imprisonment due to a judicial appeal. They were arrested in 2018 in one of the largest Civil Guard operations in the port of Algeciras, one of the main entrances for cocaine in Europe. That case ended with the arrest of 21 people—ten of them, port dock workers—and the seizure of more than 400 kilos of drugs.

With both under the magnifying glass, the police work – promoted by the Central Operational Unit of the Civil Guard – gradually gave results until it directly targeted an exporting company in Costa Rica, which had also been investigated years before for its links with cocaine trafficking through maritime containers. At the end of last summer, the company sent several of them from the port of Limón – in the east of the country – to Malaga, with their arrival scheduled for the month of October. It was the opportunity to check if there were really drugs inside. It would not be the first time: in 2019 the National Police already thwarted the shipment of eight kilos of cocaine through the Malaga port area from Brazil, in what, it is believed, was a test to check whether the capital of the Costa del Sol It could be a good entry route for this substance from South America.

Suspicious route:
The merchandise sent from Costa Rica finally arrived on October 9 and investigators tracked all the containers operated by the Costa Rican company under investigation. The trucks followed their planned routes, until one of them deviated from its established route. He took small roads and finally entered a farm on the outskirts of Alcalá de los Gazules, in the heart of the Los Alcornocales Natural Park. The delivery of the container in this area, in the middle of the forest, made the investigators suspicious, who decided to enter and search the warehouse in which the container had been stored.

Then they used the excavator and metal tools to find a metal sarcophagus hidden among scrap metal and the shears to open it and find 720 kilos of cocaine, most of it in packages wrapped in blue plastic with the word HUBLOT screen printed on it. In parallel, the agents arrested eight people. After being brought to justice, seven of them have been sent to provisional prison, while the eighth is free due to her delicate state of health.

The operation continued with nine home searches - in the provinces of Cádiz and Granada - in which cash, a Civil Guard uniform, a frequency detector, two high-end watches and various computer equipment were seized. Also various documentation that has allowed us to verify the ramifications of the criminal organization in the municipalities of Motril and Almuñécar, on the Tropical Coast of Granada.

The operation has been directed by the Mixed Investigative Court number 3 of San Roque (Cádiz) and carried out by Customs Surveillance groups of the Malaga Tax Agency, investigators from the Central Operational Unit of the Civil Guard (UCO), as well as as well as the Drugs and Organized Crime Unit (UDYCO) and the Marbella Narcotics Unit of the National Police. The case is in the hands of the Mixed Court number 3 of San Roque (Cádiz).