The packets of cocaine were marked with the Superman shield, but this was no accident.
In an effort to make the illicit merchandise look like it had been gift wrapped before being sent from Colombia, the gang wanted to hide the fact it was produced closer to home.
The drug with apparent superpowers was made in a factory hidden in an isolated cottage in Galicia, northwestern Spain.
A gang of eight "cooks" worked around the clock, seven days per week, in almost total isolation to produce 150 kilograms of the drug. But police officers who busted the gang said the sophisticated production line could have turned out 200 kilograms of cocaine a day, with a street value of $5.4 million.
Spanish police and crime analysts said this was the biggest cocaine factories discovered in mainland Europe to date, marking a new tactic among cartels.
Instead of making the drug in the jungles of Colombia or Peru, then getting past police to ship cocaine across the Atlantic, they are setting up factories in Europe to save money and cut risks.
“This is part of a new tendency which we should be aware of,” the head of the Spanish police Central Narcotics Brigade told VOA on condition of anonymity as is customary in Spain.
“The factory which we discovered in Pontevedra in Galicia was the largest which has been discovered so far in Europe," he said. "We estimate that this gang could have produced about 200 kilograms every day. Other police forces have said there are laboratories elsewhere.”
The gang hid 1.3 tons of cocaine paste, which is used to make cocaine powder sold on the streets, in stone crushing machines, shipped from South America.
Police said it was largest amount of this ingredient ever discovered in Europe in a drugs factory based on the continent.
Well hidden
“It took us 14 hours to get the coca paste out of these machines. This gives you an idea of how well it was hidden,” said the drugs squad officer.
The Superman logo was pasted on the packets of drugs intended for buyers to give the impression that it had been packed in Colombia in case buyers doubted its quality.
Police arrested 18 suspects in Pontevedra in Galicia in March, but the raid was only made public recently. All the suspects are being held on remand awaiting trial at a later date.
Eight Colombians worked all week long in the factory after the gang stripped them of their passports and telephones so they could not give away the location of the drugs operation to police. Each member of the gang was given a nickname to hide their real identities.
Different strategy
Laurent Laniel, principal scientific analyst at the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, a European Union organization based in Lisbon, said the Spanish factory was the latest in a series of drugs operations in mainland Europe.
“I think it is a different strategy. It may not replace the traditional trafficking of ready-made cocaine to Europe. But there is definitely a trend to manufacture large amounts of cocaine [in Europe]. This is not just an isolated incident,” he told VOA.
He said Dutch police said they raided ten laboratories between 2018 and 2021. Each one was making over 100 kilograms of cocaine per day. There has also been raids on smaller factories in Belgium and Spain.
“It seems that the large proportion of the cocaine paste is smuggled in carrier materials like plastics, wood, coal, cement and asphalt which means that it’s impossible to trace for police,” Laniel said.
“It is probably cheaper and less risky to have these massive laboratories in Europe, than smuggling the drug from Colombia.”
Laniel said authorities should make it harder for criminals to get access to chemicals which are essential to make cocaine.
In 2021, the United Nations estimated that every year about 2,000 tons of pure cocaine was produced in the world — worth about $5.4 billion. That estimate, however, is impossible to verify.
Laniel said the cocaine trade was “on the up” as the extraction process from the coca plant is more sophisticated than ten years ago meaning profit margins for drugs gangs are higher.
“It is a business which is very profitable. It is used to buy weapons, cause violence and corruption also in Europe,” he said.
