At least “65 people, most of them Chinese nationals,” were busted for growing cannabis. Police in the nation of Spain announced on Tuesday that Xi Jinping’s minions have been really busy on the other side of the planet lately and they’ve also been watching the way the Mexican cartels operate, growing high grade dope in the country “and trafficking it across Europe.” Interpol says that’s a no-no.
Chinese dope smugglers
Spanish police are gloating that they “dismantled one of the largest criminal gangs growing cannabis” in their country. They aren’t 420 friendly over there. At least 65 members of the operation were arrested across Spain and into Portugal and the Netherlands. They’re one “bang” of a gang.
According to law enforcement officials, they’ve been identified as “Bang of Fujian.” That refers to “the eastern Chinese province where the two main families that formed it originated.” They used Barcelona for their base of operations due to it’s location in northeastern Spain.
The European branch of Interpol, called “Europol” was in the thick of the investigation which included more than 350 law enforcement agents.
Between them, they “searched 29 large warehouses and other locations in Barcelona, Tarragona, Oviedo, Gijón and Bilbao, as well as private residences in Portugal and the Netherlands.” The Chinese weren’t happy.
The Chinese operation was incredibly sophisticated and authorities but a huge dent in it by dismantling “13 indoor plantations with nearly 40,000 marijuana plants.” The buds were worth an estimated $7.2 million on the streets of Europe.
The tricky communists even secretly tapped into the power grid “to provide artificial light to the plants.” They cheated the electric company out of a lot of juice. “Combined, the 13 warehouses used the equivalent of the average consumption of 1,177 homes,” police note.
The cartel sold shares
The probe into the Chinese dope smugglers started back in 2019 when they stumbled on a few suspicious baggies.
The reefer madness was so extreme that they sold stock in the business, recruiting “shareholders with an initial investment of 100,000 euros ($120,000), allowing the group to quickly expand its chain of warehouses.”
The Chinese operations were so well managed that prosecutors were impressed by the “well-defined criminal structure” with a “high-degree of specialization” for international services.
As explained by Inspector Toni Salleras of the Catalan Mossos d’Esquadra police, “the group is also being investigated for kidnappings and other crimes.” That goes with the territory due to all the “competition with other homegrown and foreign criminal groups for control of the production and sales of marijuana.”
The Chinese police were allegedly in on the investigation and they weren’t happy with the criminals either. They accused the bang gang of “assisting in investigating possible human trafficking and money laundering crimes.”
The whole thing unraveled after police busted “700 shipments of parcels to France, Portugal, Netherlands, Germany, Romania and Britain.”
