The Mossos d'Esquadra and the Guardia Civil have dismantled a criminal organization based between Camp de Tarragona and Granada that operated under the guise of a legal business selling products for home cultivation of marijuana, although in reality it supplied large-scale plantations.
The investigation places the core of the paradox in the business cover of the scheme itself. The companies declared a legal activity of less than 15 million euros, but moved more than 80 million through banking channels and kept a double accounting with a parallel capital of about 13 million.
The searches were concentrated in four municipalities in Tarragona and resulted in four arrests
The operation was carried out on April 21 with 13 searches in homes and industrial warehouses. Twelve entries were made in Tarragona, Torredembarra, Salou, and Perafort, while the thirteenth took place in Peligros, in Granada.
The action resulted in four men arrested and two other individuals investigated. In addition, agents seized more than 240,000 euros in cash, two vans, a car, a motorcycle, and various technological equipment.
By court order, the cessation of activity of the companies involved and the blocking of their bank accounts and assets valued at approximately 800,000 euros were also decreed.
The network offered complete cultivation setups and opened a subsidiary in Germany to expand the business
The investigation concludes that the organization did not just sell individual products. Investigators detected that it offered a comprehensive service to set up illegal plantations with lighting, ventilation, irrigation systems, fertilization, and environmental control.
This model allowed them to supply organizations dedicated to mass cultivation and drug trafficking from a structure integrated into the legal economy. Furthermore, the scheme had created a subsidiary in Germany to replicate the operation and extend the business on a European scale.
During a press conference in Barcelona, Mossos d'Esquadra sub-inspector Marc Bayon framed the operation as part of a less visible level of the business.
"We place special value on this because they have dismantled a second-layer distribution node that demonstrates the infiltration into the country's economic fabric of criminal organizations exclusively dedicated to supplying mass cultivation and drug trafficking organizations." - Marc Bayon, sub-inspector of the Mossos d'Esquadra
Afterwards, Bayon warned that the scope of the phenomenon goes beyond plantations. In his speech, he maintained that the economic volume generated by these networks gives them the capacity for economic infiltration and to acquire other risks that reach different layers of society.
In the same appearance, the police commander added that security forces are trying to act as a containment wall against a market that does not end with illegal crops, but extends to logistics, supply, and business coverage.
Bayon closed his assessment with an image about the dimension of the cause and affirmed that this iceberg, which they will now analyze in depth, will allow them to see the magnitude of the entire structure.