Catalonia was the epicenter of clandestine Marlboro factories

BarcelonaA row of tobacco packages, one after another, that went from Barcelona to Madrid. This is the simile made by the delegate of the Spanish government in Catalonia, Carlos Prieto, to exemplify the large amount of counterfeit tobacco seized by the Civil Guard. All these cigarettes, more than 100 tons of tobacco, had been manufactured by the same organization that had factories in Granollers, Piera, Vidreres, and Lloret de Mar. It was a tobacco cartel that could manufacture up to 900,000 cigarettes daily. The 10 tons seized are, in Prieto's words, "one of the largest seizures in the history of Spain".

The Civil Guard, after a joint investigation with Europol, has managed to arrest up to 20 people, four of whom have been remanded in provisional prison. As explained this Friday at a press conference by the captain of the Judicial Police of the Girona Civil Guard Command, Daniel Gómez Moreno, the group transported tobacco leaf to the factories, located in industrial warehouses. On average, there was one truck per month that left "loaded" to distribute the merchandise. Everything points to the destination of the cigarettes being other European countries. The counterfeits were mainly Marlboro, owned by Philip Morris International, which, as indicated by the delegate of the Spanish government in Catalonia, has collaborated in "technical aspects" of material valuation.

According to Prieto, the group was "perfectly structured, with industrial, logistical, and distribution capacity". In fact, among the twenty detainees, eleven are workers that the organization had "retained" and are in an irregular situation in the State. The Civil Guard does not rule out that it is a case "of labor exploitation".

Long investigation

The police had been investigating this network for practically two years. Finally, the arrests were carried out in two phases, a first with 16 arrestees on March 9, and four on the 17th. Of the approximately twenty arrests, eleven took place in Granollers and the rest between Lloret and Mollet. In the searches carried out, 29,600 kilograms of tobacco leaf, 72,800 kilograms of chopped tobacco, almost seven million sheets with tobacco brand prints, more than a thousand boxes of filters and electronic devices were seized.

The operation, christened with the name Yankao-Mikao, accuses those involved of the crimes of smuggling, membership in a criminal organization, against public health, industrial property, public treasury, and workers' rights. Nevertheless, the investigation is still open and the Civil Guard has not ruled out making more arrests, and until they are also on an "international scale." The case is being handled by court 1 of the instruction section of the Igualada court.