Another PJ police coup has seized almost 1.4 tons of cocaine from a network that appears to have ‘moved’ its product from Portimão marina to a safe house using a funeral hearse.
The ruse was designed as a way of ‘blending in’ to daily life and ‘not arousing suspicion’, police explained in a press conference yesterday.
Operation Valhalla took place following an alert at the end of last year from Danish authorities.
As it involved international drug trafficking by sea, the Maritime Analysis and Operations Centre – Narcotics (MAOC-N, in the official acronym) was also involved, as were Spanish police.
The final swoop (in which arrests were made and cocaine, two boats and three vehicles were seized), came last Thursday – and also involved the arrest of a woman in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Police stress that nine of the people arrested in the Algarve are Danish nationals, the 10th is a Latvian national.
The suspects are aged between 20 and 65, and were all allegedly in Portugal “solely for the purpose of unloading cocaine transported by a private yacht that entered Portimão Marina.”
“During the different phases, (the network) carried out discreet transport using a hearse, which moved drugs between the boat and the safe house”, the leader of the PJ investigation Vítor Ananias told the press conference, which took place in the police force’s headquarters in Lisbon.
The drugs – a total of 1,384 kgs – are believed to have come from Latin America and will have been transferred on the high seas from another vessel to the one that unloaded the drugs at Portimão marina, said Inspector Ananias.
The 10 people arrested in the Algarve face drug trafficking charges, and were due to be presented before a judge yesterday. They will almost certainly be remanded in custody.
Source: Polícia Judiciária/ Lusa/ Correio da Manhã
