UK and Spain Break up Eurotunnel Weed Smuggling Operation

It is not the first time Spain and England’s police and secret services have collaborated to bring down drug kingpins and other crime bosses.

This week, after a year-long investigation, police from both countries broke up a smuggling operation that was using cars stolen from British drivers to transport huge shipments of weed from Spain to the UK via the Eurotunnel, or Chunnel as it’s known.

The gang’s modus operandi was to steal cars in Britain, drive them to the Barcelona area, where, Spanish police said, they would let them “cool off” for a few months.

Then the smugglers would through various destinations along Spain’s Mediterranean coast where they would stuff the cars with weed, “in special compartments,” then drive to France.

In France they boarded their cars onto the Eurotunnel shuttle for the 31-mile ride under the English Channel that separates France and Britain.

One has to wonder how Eurotunnel authorities in France missed the aroma of a car packed with 230 pounds of “skunk” weed, which British authorities discovered in London last April, according to the Telegraph, that proceeded to tip them off to the operation.

Meanwhile, drug smuggling through Spain is nothing new.

Spain’s proximity to Morocco, a key source of hashish, just across the narrow Straits of Gibraltar, and close Spanish ties with former colonies in Latin America – the world’s main cocaine-producing region – have made Spain a major gateway into Europe and beyond for larger-than-normal drug consignments.

So far, up to 22 people, mostly British and Spanish nationals, have been arrested in this latest sting. More are expected, according to the Spain’s El Diario.

from
http://hightimes.com/news/uk-and-spain-break-up-eurotunnel-weed-smuggling-operation/