Officers belonging to the Policía Nacional, working with Spanish Customs & Excise, intercepted cabin cruiser with 680 kilos of hashish onboard off Almería.
The two-man crew, who have been arrested, had taken on their cargo off the coast of Morocco and hidden it within spare-fuel containers.
Prior to this latest bust, the same police operation had carried out 12 previous arrests and confiscated two cargoes of drugs totalling 843 kilos, on different pleasure craft
Police investigation work began in 2019 when they had got wind of a drug-running gang, based on the Costa del Sol whose members were almost all French-Moroccan nationals.
The gang ran drugs from Morocco to the Costa del Sol using pleasure craft concealing the drugs inside spare-gasoline containers.
The first bust came in 2020 when coastal radar picked up a suspicious craft about four nautical miles off Marbella. Upon seeing the Customs launch approaching, the drug runners sped off towards the coast, throwing gasoline containers overboard along the way before running the boat up onto Playa Nagüelas (Marbella) and abandoning it. The occupants escaped but the boat and jettisoned containers were retrieved.
The second bust was at the end of last year when a Customs launch boarded a motor launch sailing under a British flag and upon inspection found drugs concealed within fuel containers again. The people on board were arrested and 621 kilos of drugs decommissioned.
(News: Almeria, Andalucia)