A Mexican drug trafficking network with links to the country’s cartels operated marijuana plantations and cocaine processing laboratories in Spain, demonstrating how Mexican criminal groups are becoming even more involved in the boom in drug trade in Europe.
More than 200 officers carried out raids in the central provinces of Madrid and Guadalajara, which ended with the arrest of two dozen people and the confiscation of a ton of marijuana and 37 kilos of cocaine, according to a press release from the Spanish National Police on June 4.
A Mexican criminal family linked to the country’s cartels ran the drug network after using $ 10 million in cash and gold to settle in the Spanish capital, Madrid, according to a police press release. The investigation began after several Mexicans in the state of Sinaloa began occupying luxury homes in 2020.
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Officers, according to police, watched as relatives exploited large illegal marijuana farms in Guadalajara, where they received visits from drug traffickers. The harvested marijuana was exported to legitimate companies in Portugal and Switzerland, which extracted cannabidiol (CBD) from marijuana shoots for the legal market.
Meanwhile, the coca base was smuggled in from South America by courier, after which it was transformed into cocaine in clandestine laboratories run by the Sinaloa family clan. The cocaine was then sold to Dutch and Croatian traffickers or diverted to a local distribution network that included Chinese nationals.
InSight Crime Analysis
Spain has long been the gateway to the criminal migration of Mexican groups and drug trafficking to Europe, with the increase in methamphetamine and cocaine shipments now crossing the Atlantic due to the increase in demand. The Madrid-based Mexican ring, however, appeared to be opening new doors to drug trafficking.
First, as reported by InSight Crime in May 2022, coca-based smuggling of coca in Europe for local processing is a developing practice, which remains primarily in Colombian hands. Mexican traffickers also do not usually participate in local distribution.
Laurent Laniel, a scientific analyst at the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), warned of the entry of Mexican groups into the drug trade in Europe in a May 2022 interview with InSight Crime.
“The theoretical situation of Mexican groups settling in Europe represents a kind of threat that could go very wrong, and that could lead to a huge increase in violence and corruption,” he said.
Second, the involvement of Mexican criminals in the European cultivation of marijuana is new.
Spain is already one of the main illegal producers of marijuana in Europe and is also the main transit corridor for significant global volumes of hashish (high-strength marijuana resin) smuggled from Morocco.
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The latest case of Mexicans and marijuana in Spain was the hashish trade from the North African country. In October 2021, Spanish law enforcement dismantled a group using Mexican pilots to smuggle the drug into a helicopter.
The latter case, however, takes on a new dimension, as the Sinaloa family clan cultivated marijuana to infiltrate Europe’s legal economy by providing the raw material for CBD products, which are currently booming.
In a way, the measure reflects a development not only in Spain but also in the marijuana trade in Mexico. Since 2013, the spread of marijuana legalization in the United States has decimated the demand for illegal Mexican cannabis, making it “barely profitable,” according to a senior Sinaloa Cartel agent.
One result has been the small but growing production of marijuana concentrates, such as CBD oil, for which Mexican criminal groups can find a growing consumer market.
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