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The European country determined that a total of 1,600 kilograms of cocaine were discovered that came from the same discharge. The drug found was of a purity of between 80 and 90%, so it was very dangerous.
The cocaine that caused a “white tide” in 2019 on the Atlantic coast of France and caused the death of a man by overdose, came from Colombia, the French Prosecutor’s Office reported on Saturday. The investigations, carried out by the investigating body, in collaboration with the US (DEA), Dutch and British authorities, made it possible to determine that these packages came from the same discharge that was intervened off the coast of Bordeaux (south-western France) in September of 2019.
“The origin of the narcotics could be identified in a production area in northern Colombia. The purity of the analyzed products was between 80.5 and 90% “, said Philippe Astruc, prosecutor of the French city of Rennes, in a statement that gave an account of the investigation after a year since the first packages containing the size of a shoebox and were perfectly sealed with cellophane. In total 1,600 kg of cocaine were discovered.
In November 2019, the authorities multiplied the alert notices regarding these bales that gradually appeared along several hundred kilometers of the French Atlantic coast. Despite this, a 35-year-old man died of an overdose in the French district of Saint-Nazaire, on December 16, 2019, due to the “ingestion of a product that he had found on the beach,” the Prosecutor’s Office reported.
At the moment, the reasons for this download, whether voluntary or accidental, are unknown. Nor is it known who the carrier was (sailboat, freighter, or a submarine). “Taking into account that a part of the cargo was lost at sea (a third or a quarter), the initial volume of product can be described as important,” the statement said, adding that the investigation was still open. Most of the cocaine comes from three major producing countries: Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. Europe is the second world market, after North America.
The cocaine packages began to arrive on the French coast in mid-October 2019. These were some bales that caught the attention of the authorities and later became a real threat to the population. “We fear that people will try to find these packages and consume them, which is incredibly dangerous, or that traffickers or pseudo traffickers will take advantage of this to ‘make some money here'” said the prosecutor Philippe Astruc at the time, more taking into account the purity of the psychoactive substance counts.
In addition, the authorities had to monitor hundreds of kilometers of coastline and close half a dozen beaches since there were many who tried to get hold of the drugs. Martine, a woman walking with her dog, found a package by the sea. “We approached out of curiosity. We realized it was drug. We did not touch the package because they told us it could be dangerous. It was tempting! … But we are honest people, “the woman told the AFP agency at the time.
A gang that sent cocaine to Europe fell in Colombia
While in Europe the investigation to find the details of how Colombian cocaine reached European shores continues, in the country efforts to dismantle international traffickers do not cease. On Tuesday, November 10, the Prosecutor’s Office reported that 10 alleged members of a transnational drug trafficking network known as Los Cirujanos were sheltered with a security measure in a prison.
According to the investigation, the origin of which was the information provided by a human source, the CTI servers managed to establish that several people who would have specific roles within the criminal organization had been in agreement for approximately three years, with the purpose of sending cocaine to Europe, in the form of human couriers. The illicit substance left from the Alfonso Bonilla Aragón de Palmira (Valle del Cauca) and El Dorado de Bogotá airports, bound for Madrid (Spain).
The most disturbing thing is that, based on the probative material, the Prosecutor’s Office evidenced that two people linked to the health sector, apparently, were part of this criminal gang and would be in charge of surgically intervening on the women recruited to transport drugs . The investigating body pointed out that it is a surgical instrument, who works in a hospital in Cali and a man who would have posed as a surgeon, since he is not qualified, and who in recent days was working as a general practitioner (telemedicine Covid-19 patients) in a renowned hospital in Medellín.
It was known that such procedures were performed in improvised operating rooms or in motel rooms or studio apartments that were rented for days until the recovery of the victims, who were implanted with prostheses containing liquid cocaine in their breasts and legs. A member of the criminal structure profiled and recruited the women who would be loaded with the drugs, offering them job opportunities in Spain. The victims were sent on commercial flights to Madrid, where their prostheses with the alkaloid were removed, also in improvised operating rooms in that city.
The 10 people were captured on November 5, 2020 during joint operations carried out by the CTI of the Prosecutor’s Office and units of the National Army. Subsequently, they were presented before a guarantee control judge in Cali who charged them with their alleged responsibility in the crime of conspiracy to commit aggravated crime for drug trafficking purposes, but the captured accepted the charges. During the proceedings, 14 cell phones and a passport in the name of María Camila Gallego were seized.
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