The police have blown up a network that smuggled hundreds of kilos of drugs into Sweden from Spain. A total of 19 people have been arrested. – Our theory is that this has been going on for a long time, perhaps for several years, says Mats Johansson at the intelligence section. The police caught the suspicions in 2019 in a completely different investigation into serious money laundering. This summer, the police in the West region started a targeted operation and began mapping a criminal network in Sweden that is suspected of having smuggled and handled large amounts of narcotics into the country. The investigation showed that the drug was smuggled into trucks and hidden in specially built boxes in the legal cargo. The police suspect that the gang has been importing drugs for several years. After the operation started, they managed to stop three shipments from Spain. A total of 550 kilos of cannabis were taken in Sweden and 162 kilos of marijuana in France. Among other things, the narcotics were hidden in the transport of onions. Grown in Alicante Police officers from Sweden, Spain and Europol attended the case. – Cooperation within the Swedish police, but also with other authorities and international partners, have so far been success factors for the outcome of the case, says Kristin Andrae, head of the action group section at the regional investigation unit in Stockholm, in a press release. Spanish police also started their own investigation and managed to identify a Lithuanian network that was used for the logistics of drug smuggling to Sweden and other countries. “It was in Spain that the Lithuanian network hid narcotics among legal cargo as a cover,” the police write in a press release. In February this year, the police struck. The main suspects in the case were then arrested in Spain and Sweden. According to the press release, Spanish police carried out more operations and arrested additional people suspected of being part of the Lithuanian network. In connection with one of the raids, 44 kilos of marijuana were found hidden in the legal cargo of a truck. Indoor cultivation of marijuana was also found in the Alicante area of Spain. “A total of 19 people have been arrested in both Sweden and Spain, of which 14 people during 2022-2023,” the police state in the press release. See the photos from the effort at the top of the article.
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