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A DRUGS ring has been smashed in the eastern Costa del Sol after police discovered they were paying wildly inflated rents to conceal sprawling cannabis farms hidden deep in the Axarquía countryside.
The gang, described by investigators as ‘highly organised and security conscious’, had turned a string of isolated rural fincas into secret plantations where they grew industrial quantities of cannabis before exporting it across Europe.
The Policia Nacional said the organisation, led by two Lithuanian nationals, used local Spanish collaborators based in Velez-Malaga and inland Granada to rent secluded farmland ‘far from villages and inhabited properties’ at prices ‘well above market value’.
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Once harvested, the cannabis was dried, vacuum-packed, and loaded into lorries under layers of legitimate cargo bound for Germany, Switzerland and Poland – countries where the drug’s street value multiplies several times over.
Officers raided six properties in simultaneous dawn strikes, seizing 70 kilos of marijuana ready for export, €8,400 in cash, weighing scales, pressing machines and other packaging equipment. Seven suspects, including the two ringleaders, were arrested.
The operations hub for the gang in Velez Malaga was a warehouse where crops were gathered from several plantations, pressed into shape and then camouflaged in legal goods. They were then sent north by truck.
Investigators revealed the group had a rigid hierarchy: growers and harvesters at the bottom, armed guards known as ‘caretakers’ protecting stash houses, and drivers responsible for the European routes. Police said every member took ‘extraordinary security measures’ to avoid detection.
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The operation codenamed Varsovia (‘Warsaw’), was launched months ago by the Drugs and Organised Crime Unit (UDYCO) of Velez-Malaga after agents noticed a pattern of suspicious rural rentals and power consumption spikes in remote properties.
A judge has already remanded one of the men in custody as an investigation into possible connections with larger European distribution networks continues.
The police said that the case is part of a trend where northern and eastern European drug gangs are exploiting Andalucia’s mild climate, cheap land and easy access by road to make the Costa del Sol a major hub for Europe’s cannabis trade.
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