The National Police has dismantled two interconnected criminal organizations dedicated to migrant smuggling between Morocco and the Canary Islands. These gangs are responsible for the arrival of 204 Moroccan migrants in six small boats to the coasts of Lanzarote (5) and Fuerteventura (1).
As part of this operation, eight arrests have been made in the Canarian town in the provinces of Las Palmas(4), as well as in Murcia (2), Cádiz (1) and Vizcaya (1), all of them for crimes against the rights of foreign citizens, belonging to a criminal organization and false documents. Three of those arrested remain in provisional prison.
The criminal network charged each migrant an average of 3,000 euros, for which a profit for the organization is estimated at around 612,000 euros.
The investigation carried out by the National Police has been able to clarify the existence of two perfectly structured and interconnected criminal organizations dedicated to the trafficking of Moroccan migrants that operated from the Moroccan coast to the Canary Islands. These two disjointed gangs had been responsible for the arrival of 204 immigrants with a ‘modus operandi’ that has made it possible to locate the leaders, find the routes used, exit points and the amounts that migrants were charged for taking them in a boat to Spain.
Investigators have found that the criminal network charged each migrant an average of 3,000 euros, although initially they requested payment of 4,000 euros and if they did not have enough migrants for the boat to be full of capacity, they lowered the price to 2,500 euros.
With the number of boats and migrants transferred known by the agents, a benefit for the organization of more than 600,000 euros has been estimated.
With all the evidence, the agents have been able to dismantle the organizations through a device in several provinces in which almost a hundred police officers participated, carrying out three entries and searches in the homes of the leaders of the organizations, specifically in Sotogrande ( Cádiz), Lorquí (Murcia) and Lanzarote (Las Palmas), during which numerous information storage devices were intervened, as well as documentation related to economic transactions to pay for the trip in the small boats.