Spanish National Police, in a joint operation with the Police of Serbia, have dismantled a criminal network specialising in the production of marijuana in Catalonia, Spain.
Two plantations were discovered and more than 2,000 cannabis sativa plants in different stages of growth were seized, resulting in the arrest of four people ‘Balkan origin’ in the town of Abrera in the Barcelona region.
Among those arrested was the gang’s leader, who was reportedly in charge of directing the operations at the marijuana plantation and organising shipments abroad.
The investigation began in the summer of 2018, when the police received a report from the Interior Attaché in Serbia alerting them to the existence of several clandestine laboratories used for the serial production of cannabis under artificial conditions in Barcelona.
After months of research to locate its exact location, two large family-home type buildings in an exclusive area were located and determined to be the buildings in question.
Investigators discovered that some of the members of this organization lived in the houses, cultivating the marijuana and providing security for the plantations.
According to the Spanish police, the gang had an ‘airtight modus operandi’, leading a discreet life in the apparently abandoned buildings, which they only left in order to make shipments of the drug.
The network is thought to have supplied the narcotics for the European market.