The Santa Cruz de Tenerife Prosecutor’s Office has accused a man of allegedly trafficking drugs inside household appliances, so that he was arrested with almost 18 kilos of cocaine that would have reached a value of nearly 625,000 euros.
The Public Ministry will request next week that the defendant be sentenced to 9 years in prison and pay three times the value of the substance seized, which would total 1.8 million. Other accessory penalties would be the special disqualification from carrying out commercial activities related to importation in Tenerife for ten years, both in his own name and that of his company.
The accused is believed to have been involved in cocaine trafficking for a long time by importing household appliances, such as washing machines or dryers, inside which he hid the substance that was later distributed in the illicit market.
The plot came to light when the Customs Surveillance Operational Unit detected the shipment of these devices in a suspicious manner, including a fictitious recipient with an address in Adeje, despite the fact that the accused was the one who was going to receive the shipment at his address in Adeje. Santa Cruz.
For this reason, a surveillance device was established around a parcel located next to the customs company in order to discover the true recipient of the shipment. Then the National Police agents saw how the defendant picked up four packages that corresponded to two washing machines and as many dryers that he loaded into a van owned by a company that appeared in his name.
The entity had been established by the accused and his ex-partner with a capital of 5,000 euros, it had no workers, there were no declared income or expenses and yet it was the owner of a motorcycle, a van and an SUV. Investigations indicated that these vehicles would have been acquired through profits obtained from cocaine trafficking.
When the suspect was about to leave the shipping company, he was intercepted by the police, who seized eleven packages of homogeneous blocks of a substance inside the appliances that turned out to be cocaine. Specifically, 14 tablets were found that weighed 14 kilos and had a purity of 78.5%, five of five kilos with 79.28%, two with two kilos and 78.6% and one more than one kilo and purity of 78. .31%. At the time of the defendant’s arrest, 575 euros in cash and a mobile phone were also seized.
Searches were then carried out in the homes that were linked to the detainee, finding 26,000 euros in one in Adeje, 7,775 in another in Santa Cruz and 60,000 that were in the possession of his sister, in addition to various effects related to this illegal activity.
