Spanish Police Bust Montenegrin Gang on Canary Islands
Spanish police on the Canary Islands arrested four suspected members of Montenegro’s notorious Škaljari clan, known as a brutal gang that smuggles cocaine from Latin America to Europe.
Officers searched the gang’s residence and seized “408 kilos
of cocaine, nearly 500,000 euro (US$586,000) in cash, a vehicle, a yacht-like
boat, 12 encrypted phones, electronic security devices, machine banknote
counters and vacuum packers, as well as various tools and documentation related
to criminal activities,” the Guardia Civil, said in a statement on Sunday.
Madrid’s El Pais newspaper reported that one of the four
arrested has been Predrag Vujošević, one of the former leaders of a the most
successful jewel-stealing gang in history, the Pink Panthers. Police reportedly
handcuffed him while he was still guarding the drug.
The criminal network had established a pipeline for the entry
of cocaine to the Canary Islands. They hid the drug in rented luxury
residential units, according to the statement.
The gang was noticed in November last year when its members
started delivering drugs to local groups and at one point handed over 250,000
and 155,000 euros ($292,917 and $181,608) to third parties, police said.
Authorities believe that the gang was moving drug money off the island and
funneling it into the legitimate market.
Europol, police officials in Albania and Montenegro, and the
Interior Attaché of the Spanish Embassy in Belgrade, Serbia, aided the Canary
Islands operation, according to police.
Montenegro’s Vice-Prime Minister, who also coordinates the
country’s security services, Dritan Abazović, praised Montenegrin law
enforcement agencies that supported the operation.
“The operation on the Canary Islands demonstrates that there
will be no discrimination in the punishment of members of organized criminal
groups and the suppression of their unlawful activities in Montenegro and far beyond
our boundaries,” Abazović said according to Montenegro’s Vijesti news outlet.
Abazović has previously stated that the Montenegrin
government would deal with organized crime and that Montenegro will not be a
country that “exports crime,” having in mind that branches of Montenegrin mafia
groups have spread far beyond the country’s borders.
The two Montenegrin mafia clans — the Škaljari and the Kavač
— both originate from Kotor, on the country’s picturesque Adriatic coast. They
were formerly members of the same gang, smuggling drugs from South America into
Europe. They split in 2014 after a botched cocaine deal in Spain, resulting in
a violent rupture that drew in other Serbian and Montenegrin criminal groups.
The conflict’s blood trail stretches throughout the Balkans
and beyond, with killings in Spain, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, and
Greece, according to an OCCRP investigation published last year.
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