“Narcos from the sky” had “wide structures” at the Portuguese airport and others across Europe. Police talk about corrupt officials.
The cocaine trafficking network dismantled by the Spanish National Police (PN) and the Judiciary Police had a “large structure” at Beja airport, where it operated “a network of corrupt officials” led by a Portuguese citizen, explains a PN statement to which Lusa had access.
According to , a 71-year-old Portuguese drug trafficker, three of his collaborators and agents were arrested in October for using Beja airport for drug trafficking.
The man will have bribed two PSP agents to access the drugs, which arrived on private jets at this airport. The PJ adds that this suspect, known to the Portuguese police authorities, is internationally recognized as being a “High Value Target”, in other words, a suspect of high criminal relevance in the underworld of illicit drug trafficking.
The National Directorate of the PSP told JN that the arrest of the police officers “originated in a report by the PSP of Beja itself to the local Public Prosecutor’s Office”, and “the opening of internal disciplinary proceedings was ordered”.
The criminal scheme, titled “Narcos from Heaven”, involved maritime transport, using cargo containers to conceal cocaine heading to Spanish ports. According to the statement, after months of investigation, it was confirmed that the trafficking network had access to several European airports as an entry point for cocaine shipments, “one of which is found in the Portuguese town of Beja”.
“The network had a broad structure there, which is why its members carried out numerous trips to Portugal”, adds the statement.
The PN also adds that on that occasion it was not possible for the criminal network to load the plane with drugs, which resulted in a loss exceeding 500 thousand euros for the organization.
The suspects kept the plan to send it to Europe almost two tons of cocaine for private flightsbut in order to “be able to recover economically from the loss and finance the operation, as well as to maintain their standard of living, they changed their way of working“, opting for “smaller-scale” operations, sending suitcases of cocaine from several countries towards Barajas airport, in Madrid.
They were detected by the investigation four shipments using this method over the course of one year: September 2023 (16.5 kilos of cocaine), March 2024 (31 kilos), April 2024 (60 kilos) and September 2024 (20 kilos).
In May this year, 344 kilos of cocaine were found hidden on the floor of a container loaded with avocados from Peru bound for the port of Barcelona, and the shipment was intercepted before reaching the hands of the trafficking network.
In total, in Portugal and Spain, 25 people of various nationalities.
