In a joint operation between Spain´s National Police and the Catalan Mossos d’Esquadra, one of the most important criminal organisations of Chinese origin, known as the Fujian Bang, dedicated to international marijuana trafficking, has been dismantled.
The joint operation, in which more than 350 agents have participated and which has had the support of CITCO and EUROPOL, has allowed the arrest of 65 members of the organisation, the majority of Chinese origin. In addition, 29 entries and registration have been carried out in various homes, premises and industrial warehouses in Barcelona, Tarragona, Oviedo, Gijón, Bilbao, as well as in Portugal and the Netherlands.
The investigation began at the end of 2019 when a joint team made up of the National Police and the Mossos d’Esquadra, under the direction of the Court of Instruction number 5 of Badalona (Barcelona), initiated an investigation as a result of the detection of different parcel shipments that they contained significant consignments of packaged marijuana.
Thanks to police inquiries, it was found that, behind these shipments, the participation of a broad criminal organisation that was fully established in Catalonia was hidden, despite the fact that it had different branches in various parts of Spanish territory and in different localities on Europe. Investigators found that the organisation had a well-defined criminal structure, as well as a high degree of specialisation to carry out its criminal activities on an international scale.
The criminal network was separated into different factions, each of which managed different marijuana productions with which they fed the current great European demand. It has been proven that they would have made more than 700 parcel shipments, containing marijuana, to different parts of Europe (France, Portugal, Holland, Germany, Romania, the United Kingdom, etc.).
In this sense, each faction functioned as a shared work cooperative since the people who belonged to each of them were considered partners and workers. This organisational methodology allowed that if one of the groups fell, the others remained active without much damage, since it allowed them to function individually. In addition, the criminal network had the collaboration of different people who, settled in different European countries, managed the sale of the drug consignments produced.
Given the breadth and scope of the organisation, on April 14 a joint police device was established, supervised by the Instruction Court number 5 of Badalona, which allowed the arrest of 57 people, which would be added to the eight arrests that had already been made. detained in the course of the investigation.
The operation also made it possible to block different checking accounts and seize several properties of the groups, as well as to make 23 entries and records, to which would be added another six that had already been made in previous phases, in different floors, premises and industrial buildings that the organisation had in Barcelona, Tarragona, Oviedo, Gijón and Bilbao as well as in homes in Portugal and Holland.
In this sense, it is necessary to highlight the participation of EUROPOL, in the tasks of analysis and coordination of the investigation and the logistical support provided by CITCO (Intelligence Centre against Terrorism and Organised Crime).
In the police device, thirteen plantations that housed almost 40,000 marijuana plants in different stages of growth were located and dismantled.
The plantations had sophisticated cultivation and maintenance systems that were illegally nourished by electricity, a fact that demonstrated the high degree of specialisation of the criminal groups. For this reason, Endesa technicians also intervened in the operation and determined that there were seven fraudulent connections in the electricity grid, which represented illegal consumption equivalent to the annual consumption of 1,177 homes.
Similarly, in the course of the investigation, the police officers have been able to intervene 8.5 kilograms of cocaine, 2 kilograms of MDMA, almost 200,000 euro in cash and more than 380 kg of marijuana in buds, already prepared for distribution and destined for international distribution. In addition, another 259 kg of marijuana have been intervened, which investigators are still analysing what relationship they have with the criminal group.
The criminal organisation under investigation, known as Bang from Fujian, was already widely known by the Security Forces and Forces for its links to human trafficking and crimes against workers’ rights. The police action carried out has made it possible to discover this current dedication, in an intense and highly specialised way, to international drug trafficking.
The complexity of the criminal structure used by this criminal network means that the investigation continues active, which is why new arrests are not ruled out, as well as the practice of other judicial proceedings.