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Date Published: 13/09/2022

ARCHIVED - Chinese drug gang jailed for running cannabis farm in Alicante, Spain and exporting it to the UK

ARCHIVED ARTICLE

The traffickers shipped the drugs hidden in clothing to Britain from Valencia

<span style='color:#780948'>ARCHIVED</span> - Chinese drug gang jailed for running cannabis farm in Alicante, Spain and exporting it to the UK

A dozen members of a Chinese drug gang that grew marijuana on a grand scale in Aspe, Alicante, and trafficked it to the UK and the Netherlands via Valencia have each been sentenced to more than four years in prison.

The defendants formed part of a "perfectly coordinated criminal organisation" which was divided into three groups that acted "semi-autonomously" and cultivated marijuana at two large industrial warehouses in Aspe and Albacete in the neighbouring region of Castilla-La Mancha.

One of the groups was responsible for setting up the indoor plantations and the other two were in charge of exporting the narcotic substance to Britain and Holland using private courier companies and either false identities or authentic identities obtained from stolen documentation.

From just one of the courier offices the network used for its illicit activity, located in Valencia, a total of 81 shipments were made between April 2018 and the summer of 2019, with a total weight of more than a ton of cannabis.

The packages were marked as 'clothing' and were destined for different cities in the UK and the Netherlands. A further 125 parcels, weighing more than 1.9 tonnes, was shipped through two other 'parcel delivery companies'.

Also of interest: 44 arrests as police shut down international, German-run drug trafficking network in Malaga

The convicts, under investigation by the National Police's Central Narcotics Brigade (UDYCO) since March 2019, lived "intermittently" in several flats in Valencia city where they stored the equipment needed to cultivate the drugs.

Police finally dismantled the operation in early December 2019 with a total of 16 house searches in Valencia, Aspe, Elche, Albacete and Madrid, during which almost 200 kilos of marijuana was seized.

The Provincial Court of Valencias sentenced seven of the defendants to four-and-a-half years in prison for offences against public health, membership of a criminal group and defrauding the electricity supply, to be replaced by extradition from Spain and a ban on entering the country for eight years.

For the remaining five, convicted of the same offences, the court sentenced them to four years and two months in jail.

The court also ordered the destruction of the drugs and awarded the seized vehicles, cultivation instruments, computers, phones and cash to the government Fund of Assets.

Now read: Irish runner killed while out jogging in Spain

Image: Archive

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