The use of the swastika and other types of marks, such as those of cars or clothes, serve to mark which criminal organization the stash is directed to.
On March 21, 2022, F., 55 years old and of Colombian nationality, was driving a Citröen Picasso through the Glorieta Plaza Fuente de Goya in Getafe when the National Police intercepted her. F. she had been under investigation for months, with telephone taps and police surveillance. The researchers knew what they were doing. In a hidden compartment of the vehicle, what is known in police jargon as a “caleta”, the woman, with a criminal record for drug trafficking, was carrying eight packages wrapped in plastic and loaded with a compact white substance that turned out to be high-quality cocaine, 81.2%.
As a result of this intervention, that same day, the agents searched in the capital another vehicle used by an associate of F., A., 42 years old and also of Colombian nationality, but with no criminal record. In another ‘cove’ of the car, the Police seized 38 packages -commonly known as ‘bricks’-, also of high purity.
In total, the agents seized that day in the two searches 35.6 pure kilos of cocaine that on the market would have a value of almost 1.8 million euros, according to the recent sentence of the Provincial Court which sentences both to sentences of between six and seven years and six months in prison for a crime “against public health of substances that cause serious damage to health.”
A priori, it was another operation against drug trafficking, but with one caveat, that many of the seized packages had a Nazi swastika clearly etched on them. The rest, They had the word “Maybach” written on them, a German luxury vehicle manufacturer, a subsidiary of the prestigious German Mercedes-Benz Group.
The biggest stash
On August 25, 600 kilometers from Madrid, dozens of journalists attended a press conference by the National Police. The agents, in collaboration with officials from the Customs Surveillance Service of the Tax Agency, had seized the largest haul of cocaine in Spain to date in the port of Algeciras. A milestone. The big blow to drug trafficking so far. Almost 9.5 tons of narcotic substance that had been transported in a refrigerated maritime container from Machala (Ecuador) were seized.
The drug, also packaged in ‘bricks’, was hidden inside 1,080 boxes of bananas. In the illicit shipment seized by the investigators of the so-called Operation Nano, directed by the central UDYCO with the support of the Anti-Drug Prosecutor’s Office, thousands of bricks with more than 30 different logos were detected. Curiously, among them was the swastika, and some also had the word “Hitler” engraved on them. But not only, there were logos of car brands, such as Chevrolet or BMW, or luxury clothing brands. [algunos tenían la palabra ‘Raw’ (crudo en inglés)].
According to police officials, the organization responsible for the shipment could send 40 containers a month to Europe and “had an extensive commercial network for shipping containers from Ecuador to Spain.” also using the port of Vigo, in the northwest of Spain. In other words, this operation is just the tip of the iceberg.
But why do the packages have the swastika engraved on them? What does it mean? According to agents specialized in drug trafficking, each logo, each brand, corresponds to a criminal organization different from Europe that was going to receive the cache. And the joint shipment of drugs for several organizations, as if it were a cooperative, allows the main distributors to reduce costs and risks. “It’s very common,” police sources say.
Especially in recent times. On May 25, Peru’s anti-drug police seized 58 kilos of cocaine that were prepared in a small coastal town north of Paita, also in packages with the Nazi swastika and Hitler’s name engraved on them.