Intercepted a British sailboat with 2,000 kilos of cocaine in Santander

The Customs Surveillance Service of the Tax Agency, the Civil Guard and the National Police have located this Wednesday, 30 nautical miles from Santander, a sailboat with the United Kingdom flag that was carrying 2,000 kilos of cocaine inside, valued at about 70 millions of euros.

As reported to EFE early this Wednesday by sources from the Customs Surveillance Service, the sailboat was intercepted at sea and transferred to the port of Santander for custody after an “exceptional” operation on the coast of the Cantabrian Sea..

In a statement, the Civil Guard adds that this ship, a “sloop” type and named Night Falls, has been located in this international operation in which the Atlantic Analysis and Operations Center, the Counter-Terrorism Intelligence Center and Organized Crime and the UK National Crime Agency (NCA).

The crew members, a Spaniard, two Venezuelans and a Colombian, did not resist when they were approached this morning and admitted that they were carrying drugs, after it was verified that there were “a significant number of bales” throughout the boat..

The sailboat, 13 meters long, was not on a certain course, according to the Civil Guard, which points out that the drug may come from the illicit drug trade in South America and the ship “had just crossed the Atlantic to arrive at Spanish coasts”. .

The fact that it did not have a fixed course was “very striking, not only because of the weather conditions in the area, but also because it coincides with the usual practice in this type of operation, in which vessels transporting cocaine from South America or the Caribbean carry out a transshipment to another vessel in order to reach its final destination to make it more difficult for authorities to detect it,” adds the Armed Institute.

For this reason, the Civil Guard believes that the Night Falls sailboat would be at those coordinates waiting to transship the drug, although its position was communicated by the United Kingdom after searching for this ship for two days.

The vessel, which was without lights or location systems, was transferred after its inspection to the Port of Santander after this operation, coordinated and directed by the Anti-drug Prosecutor of the National Court.

The Civil Guard acknowledges that this operation is “exceptional” on the Cantabrian coast, but it is “one more” of those carried out on the so-called “Atlantic route of cocaine”, which use sailboats from South America to smuggle drugs , in the middle of the Atlantic, to other ships that introduce it to Europe.