Their headquarters were in the province of Barcelona, but they delivered all over Europe. In vans, through seemingly legit takeaways, as if it is a great trading platform. They planted marijuana in industrial warehouses in Catalonia or Asturias. They did it from there Large shipments by minibus to countries such as the Netherlands, Italy, France or Portugal. They have become one of the most powerful cannabis smuggling mafia in the entire continent. Toni Salleras, a Mossos investigator involved in the investigation, later practiced “in a way we haven’t seen before.” It was precisely a shipment to France that alerted the police.
El Periódico de España from the Prensa Ibérica group has accessed the indictment regarding the trial of 63 people accused of establishing one of the largest cannabis smuggling networks in our country’s history. The police confiscated about 20,000 plants from them. Researchers calculate that they will receive a benefit of more than two million euros. But they had already placed more than three million euros in products. Now, its members face prison sentences ranging from 7 to 13 years.
Although this mafia was based in Spain and operated on European territory, it operated like a large Chinese company. In fact, the spokesperson for Mossos himself described them as “real marijuana factories” after the arrests.Same as any other legitimate trading factory due to the volume and functioning of the business they run. Of the 63 defendants, 61 come from China. They were known as Fujian Bang. Bang is the name given to the mafia in China. The region they come from, Fujian, is the easternmost region of the Asian giant.
three digits
This criminal network had a pyramidal hierarchical organization divided into three levels. Chiefs sat on the highest; The brains of operations, investors and entrepreneurs who use shell companies to run transactions. also included other trusted members specializing in the cultivation of cannabis. Popularly known as “teacher”. They were experts in the cultivation of cannabis, limiting themselves to choosing varieties to plant and assessing the quality of the product. They received special treatment and pay, and were in contact with the drug only for as long as necessary to assess and weigh them, thus limiting their risk of being caught red-handed.
At the second level was the logistics team. His salary was between 2,000 and 2,500 euros; Its functions are very diverse: search and purchase of warehouses, purchase of necessary materials for the fields and distribution of the obtained material, shipments It is in the warehouses of the members of the organization for the supply of drugs or purchases. They also received a number of reinforcements to do “work” involving a certain risk, such as transporting materials to storage or distribution points.
However, some of these workers saw the possibility of advancing behind the organization. This is the nickname of one of the detainees, who decided to become an entrepreneur on his own, since he did not occupy the highest hierarchical position in the organization, and Build several farms in various parts of Spain behind this mafia. The melon was one of the subjects that the police observed going in and out of one of the fields several times.
At the bottom were the so-called “gardeners”. It is the most basic level of the organization and consists of personnel assigned to work in warehouses for a certain period of time to control and manage the correct planting, with the instructions previously given by ‘xiaolin’. Gardeners, all from China, are the lowest paid and rarely leave the shed where they tend the plants.
This whole organization, in turn, was divided into three branches. This organizational system, according to the prosecution, was key to the success of the network: “By dividing it into different groups, each of which manages different marijuana productions and feeds into huge European demand, each group functioned as a co-operative of shared businesses, where their people were considered partners, investors and workers, thus facilitating the exchange of shares for the business provided. That way, if one of these groups goes down, the others can stay active without too much damage as they work individually.”
an abandoned package
The rabbit’s shipment was stopped just as he was about to leave for Paris, At a Seur office in Barcelona. It was a normal-looking package, but contained 17.4 kilos of marijuana. On the same day, another package weighing just over 8 kilos was intercepted, bound for Rome. A few days later, 6.3 kilos of buds were seized, bound for Lisbon on 7 January 2020, and another 18.3 kilos of buds to be distributed between Romania and the United Kingdom.
On January 14, police received an apparently abandoned package from a public street in Barcelona. It also weighed 6.3 kilograms, the same weight as the package seized before it reached Portugal. It contained marijuana. Mossos d’Esquadra had by then the elements to act. They did so on January 20 when the Manresa Basic Research Unit (CME) was dismantled in an industrial warehouse at the Santa Anna Industrial Estate in Sant Fruitós del Bages (Barcelona). A crop with a total of 858 cannabis plants, 2,800 cuttings prepared to be planted and a large number of equipment required for this type of planting.
Interventions of substances and entries into industrial warehouses took place throughout 2020. While some fields were destroyed, other members of the organization took measures to erase the traces and stay at a distance. So, on July 23, 2020, after a crop was dismantled in an industrial warehouse in Canovelles (Barcelona), there was a series of phone calls between the two bosses where they commented on what had happened and the instructions they had given. got it from the chief. In the negotiations, they agree to delete the person of “Konglong”, one of the detainees. That same night, said the boss, his mother and 5 other investors met at a Chinese restaurant in Santa Coloma de Gramenet to decide how to continue the business.
Boss Melon
After these meetings, there were changes in the organizations. Some elements came, others went. Some were arrested and others were promoted and occupied these vacancies. This was the case of the aforementioned Melon, who was about to be promoted from logistical to boss. Melon started with the fields in Catalonia, but his dexterity and ability to command meant he was assigned to Asturias to manage some of the fields.. Eventually he started managing five farms by himself.
Let him or other members of the organization stay, rent a car, buy transport tickets, etc. For example, if you need a NIE, Melon He asked for it from one of these fronts and paid him 500 euros for it. When the process was finished, the dummy was sent to the police station to report that the document was lost.
In one of the tapped phone calls, Melon explained to her closest collaborator that she had spoken to one of the bosses and “asked her to invest in the business as she will be leaving soon and suggested she take the position”. in the Barcelona area. So one of the bosses was preparing his replacement: “I was teaching him so he would know how to act. and talk to older people, refer to people above them,” says the tax summary.
The last climb is not over. Thanks to several combined operations of Mossos d’Esquadra and the National Police working cooperatively in this operation, the organization was falling. with various European police forces, such as the French or the Portuguese. Although this mafia still has at least a dozen members on the run and their whereabouts are unknown, they are now all to blame. Prison sentences of up to 13 years are sought for the majority of detainees.
However, this was not the only police operation against Chinese cannabis growers on Spanish soil. Recently, on January 2, the National Police was purged A Chinese crime syndicate in Toledo He devoted himself to planting marijuana and arrested 34 people. Just a month ago, in December, Security forces cracked down on another network of the same nationality in Guadalajara, which not only prostitutes women, but also transports drugs to different parts of Spain and Europe.
Marijuana cultivation and trafficking is a criminal practice that yields great benefits in very short periods of time. As they are indoor fields, up to 4 harvests can be harvested per year (compared to a single harvest for outdoor crops). The weight of cannabis varies between 2 and 5 thousand euros. In the intervening conversations, Melon assured that he could make a profit of about 20,000 euros every 3 months (that’s how long a harvest cycle takes). The organization came to plant several tons of marijuana. These high returns are attracting more and more attention from Chinese criminal networks, who are eager to get a slice of the drug trafficking pie that has hitherto been almost exclusively in the hands of the Spanish clans.