The Civil Guard verified in January that a person residing in a town in Segovia was unloading trucks with palletized merchandise at his home. It was then that the investigation of the Canaleja operation began, which has now borne fruit: the agents have seized nearly 45 tons of lithium batteries accumulated in a clandestine warehouse in the home of the detainee in Otero de Herreros, a municipality of just 1,000 population. This person, supposedly, was engaged in the irregular introduction of this material into Spain without any type of control.. Then, allegedly, he manipulated it and sold it fraudulently.

It is estimated that the subject was able to collect up to one and a half million euros thanks to this illegal activity. The residents of the area were oblivious to the task that their neighbor carried out inside his home. Much less, of the risk situation to which they were exposed due to the high degree of danger of lithium.

The arrested person is accused of crimes of risk caused by explosion or other agents, against natural resources and the environment, against the Public Treasury and against Social Security. In addition, the Benemérita was also able to verify that he carried out suspicious transactions from other countries. Despite the security measures he adopted to avoid being identified, the lithium was later sold to national and foreign buyers through web pages or instant messaging..

a secret store

The detainee, according to the investigators, devised a plan to make his business more profitable. When the agents entered his home —in an urbanization on the outskirts of the municipality—, they discovered that the lower part had been excavated. In this way, he gained space to store the material. In fact, it was in this nook where the largest number of batteries were found, some of them in poor condition and clearly tampered with.. And to separate the lithium based on its quality, the alleged perpetrator installed a container in the patio of his house for the best preserved batteries.. In addition, in a room in his home he installed a workplace with the necessary tools for handling the devices..

Lithium is a dangerous chemical and can cause irreversible skin damage.. For this reason, the handling and handling of said material must be carried out with special care.. Its transfer from one place to another must be carried out with vehicles authorized for the transport of dangerous goods.. This did not happen: the detainee never informed the courier companies of the content of his shipment. The Canaleja operation is, so far, the most important at a national and European level in relation to stored lithium waste.