A NEW report from Spain’s Prosecutor’s Office has laid naked among the many mafia teams working within the nation right now.
There are some actual huge hitters and terrifying outfits among the many rogue’s gallery, who’ve chosen to base themselves in Spain and make it the worldwide epicentre for transnational organised crime.
Some of the world’s most harmful mafias have focused Andalucia, turning Malaga and particularly Marbella right into a hub for stylish criminals.
The revelations come from the not too long ago launched 2024 Annual Report of the Fiscal General del Estado (FGE), which particulars how the gangs are evolving, the place they function, and the way the violence is intensifying.
So wish to know who’s who in Spain’s felony panorama? Right this manner…
Mocro Maffia
Originally from the Netherlands however of Moroccan origin, the Mocro Maffia has prolonged its bloody turf wars into southern Spain.
They have strengthened their grip on Marbella, and are blamed for the 2023 assassination of a Dutch-Moroccan man in Chiclana, Cadiz – a protected witness who had testified in opposition to one of many gang’s bosses within the Netherlands.
A Dutch mafia boss linked to the Mocro Maffia was arrested in Marbella for laundering not less than €6 million for drug cartels in January final yr.
Albanian mafia
Albanian gangs have quickly carved out a spot as one among Spain’s strongest narco organisations.
They dominate indoor marijuana cultivation in Granada, edging out conventional native clans, and run refined container smuggling operations by means of Valencia.
In Malaga, they’ve even been documented working facet by facet with Chinese gangs in main cocaine and laundering operations.
A serious bust on the Costa del Sol final yr noticed 30 individuals arrested – together with an Albanian kingpin –in an operation that intercepted 3.2 tonnes of cocaine smuggled from Ecuador to the Costa del Sol.
In July this yr, Albanian mafia boss Juxhin Drazhi, one among Europe’s most wished narco kingpins, was arrested whereas attempting to flee his luxurious villa in Almuñecar, Granada.
Chinese networks
Chinese teams seem in each drug trafficking and monetary crime.
They crew up with Albanians in Malaga and Marbella whereas additionally working giant counterfeiting schemes, making them key gamers in each the smuggling and laundering sides of the enterprise.
Serbian traffickers
Serbian teams, usually working with Spanish gangsters, have primarily based themselves out of Barcelona.
They specialize in importing cocaine from South America and financing operations by means of marijuana cultivation.
One Serbian ringleader was jailed in June 2024 after prosecutors revealed he had coordinated shipments utilizing the encrypted SKY-ECC community.
Another Serbian drug trafficker on the run since 2016 was arrested in Lloret de Mar, close to Barcelona, in July this yr after a pretend Slovakian passport uncovered his id throughout a routine police test.
READ MORE: Police seize 1.3 tonnes of cocaine on Malaga-bound ship as stowaway narcos tried to dump it
Dutch and Lithuanian gangs
In Granada, Dutch and Lithuanian teams have moved in on the hashish commerce, changing household growers and defending plantations with firearms.
Dutch networks are additionally lively in importing MDMA and amphetamines from the Netherlands, feeding Spain’s artificial drug market.
The Costa del Sol: a felony hub
Prosecutors singled out Malaga and Marbella as a principal focus for worldwide mafias.
Here, drug trafficking is intertwined with complicated monetary operations, with luxurious villas and shell firms used to clean hundreds of thousands in narco earnings.
The corruption has even reached the port of Malaga itself, the place workers of a personal scanning agency are below investigation for serving to smugglers slip containers by means of undetected.
The report warns that violence is escalating.
In Huelva and Cádiz, narcolanchas at the moment are escorted by hooded males wielding Kalashnikovs.
Shootings in opposition to police have already been recorded, whereas in Jerez computerized weapons are turning up in virtually each main bust.
Prosecutors say some gangs even flaunt assault rifles on social media, turning drug cargo unloadings into paramilitary spectacles.
READ MORE: WATCH: Police search out final narco from pace boat that killed two cops in southern Spain
Where are the British and Irish?
Despite its detailed account of overseas mafias, the report doesn’t namecheck British or Irish gangs working in Spain.
But their footprint nonetheless emerges within the figures. The UK filed 30 extradition requests to Spain in 2024 – the third-highest of any nation after solely Peru and Russia.
Ireland, in the meantime, lodged 45 judicial requests for Spain’s prosecutors to assemble proof or perform procedural steps in Irish felony instances.
And just a few different well-known dangerous man names are absent from the Prosecutor’s Office’s report.
There’s no point out of the Turkish mafia, regardless of being chargeable for a string of shootings and murders this summer time.
The once-mighty Swedish mafia doesn’t function, and seems to have been absolutely dismantled, judging by an ongoing trial in Madrid on the minute. And the Russian mafia will get no point out in any way.
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