Ten suspect vehicles, €500,000 in cash also seized during operation
Yesterday’s mega swoop by police on various ports ended with four people arrested – two of them AT Customs officials – 15 cited as ‘official suspects’, as well as the seizing of 10 cars, €500,000 in cash and five firearms and other weapons.
As reports explained yesterday, PJ police, in cooperation with international counterparts, are investigating “the benefit of criminal organisations dedicated to exporting large quantities of cocaine from Latin America” and into Europe.
These networks use Portuguese seaports as a gateway for drugs to reach the wider continent. They are invariably concealed within products packed in containers – and to help the process along, ports officials are allegedly bribed to ‘look the other way’.
At least, that is the theory behind what has been dubbed ‘Operation Porthos’, focused on suspicions of the crimes of active and passive corruption, drug trafficking, money laundering and no doubt quite a bit in between.
Searches yesterday, which took in a total of 32 homes and other premises, were carried out in the Lisbon metropolitan area, Sines and Leiria.
Coincidentally, “or perhaps not”, suggests Correio da Manhã, the AT Customs authority published a communiqué 24-hours before the swoop to announce the apprehension in Sines of 264 kilos of cocaine, hidden in a container ship, packed between bags of dried beans.
CM adds that “all the suspects” identified have been under close vigilance over the past few months, “whether personally, or via telephone” (tapping). This is what has enabled the welter of drug seizures in recent months, reported by UNCTE, the PJ’s national unit for the combat of drug trafficking. 2024 was, according to police data, the year that broke all records for the sheer quantity of drugs apprehended.
In other words, at the same time that customs officials were being investigated, police were using the information on incoming shipments, and acting – apparently “without any of the suspects realising” that their conversations were, in fact, being listened in to.
