EU nations cooperate on major drug seizures

Law enforcement officers from Italy, Portugal, and Spain hope to have more success in their fight against international drug smugglers, after a collaborative effort resulted in the interception of a high-speed boat in the Atlantic Ocean, and the seizure of 2.6 metric tons of cocaine.

The operation on Thursday also led to the arrest of four suspects – an Albanian man living in Italy, two Spanish citizens, and a Gibraltar resident – officials said on Monday, as they spoke for the first time about the incident.

Italian officials said the drugs could have been sold on the streets of Europe for as much as 500 million euros ($568 million).

"The wholesale value of the cocaine is estimated at approximately 78 million euros," an official statement from Italy's Guardia di Finanza, a military law enforcement agency responsible for securing borders, said. "Once delivered to their destination and diluted for retail distribution, the narcotics could have generated total revenues of around 500 million euros."

Officers added that organized crime gangs are increasingly using extremely powerful "go fast" boats.

The rigid inflatable vessels have an overall length of between 10 meters and 16 meters, and several engines and can hit speeds of more than 70 knots, or 130 km/h.

Organized crime gangs use the vessels to recover drugs wrapped in watertight packaging that has been dropped at sea by ships arriving in Europe from South America.

Portuguese police officers said they stopped the speedboat 90 kilometers southwest of Cape Espichel, which is close to Portugal's capital Lisbon.

On the South American side of the distribution chain, Police Captain Jean Carlos Bustamante, who works out of the Ecuadoran city of Duran, told the BBC in an in-depth analysis published on Tuesday that gangs are increasingly able to act with something approaching impunity.

"We have many, many bad people inside our unit, inside the state, inside politics," he said. "We have many, many guys that are corrupt. They are in the pay of the gangs."

Ecuador's President Daniel Noboa has said around 70 percent of the cocaine that floods into Europe and the United States is shipped via his country.

The president, who is attempting a crackdown, said much of it comes from nearby Colombia and Peru, which are thought to be the planet's two biggest producers. Ecuadorian criminal gangs with links to Mexican cartels and the Albanian mafia then send the drugs to places including Europe.

And attempts to intercept drugs as they arrive in Europe continue, with the European Union agency European Border and Coast Guard Agency, or Frontex, adding on Monday that other recent operations scooped up almost half a metric ton of cocaine that had been dropped in open water between June 8 and July 5 in operations led jointly by Belgian customs officers, Frontex, and customs officers from Denmark.