Catalonia was the epicentre of clandestine Marlboro factories

BarcelonaA line of cigarette packs, one after another, stretching from Barcelona to Madrid. This is the analogy made by the Spanish government's delegate in Catalonia, Carlos Prieto, to exemplify the large quantity 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 produce 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 custody. As explained this Friday at a press conference by the Captain of 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 a month that left "loaded" to distribute the merchandise. Everything suggests that the destination of the cigarettes was other European countries. The counterfeits were mostly Marlboro, owned by Philip Morris International, which, as indicated by the Spanish government's delegate 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 Spain. 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 almost two years. Finally, the arrests were made in two phases, a first with 16 arrests on March 9, and four on the 17th. Of the twenty arrests, eleven took place in Granollers and the rest between Lloret and Mollet. During the searches carried out, 29,600 kilograms of tobacco leaf, 72,800 kilograms of tobacco cut, almost seven million sheets with tobacco brand serigraphies, more than a thousand boxes of filters and electronic devices were seized.

The operation, codenamed Yankao-Mikao, accuses those involved of the crimes of smuggling, belonging to a criminal organization, against public health, industrial property, public treasury, and workers' rights. However, the investigation is still open and the Civil Guard has not ruled out making more arrests, and even that they may also be on an "international scale". The case is being handled by court 1 of the instruction section of the court of instance of Igualada.