Post by Timothy Lawn, M.A.

'Narco subs': How thousands of tonnes of cocaine are being shifted across seas - Spanish authorities are increasingly on the lookout for so-called "narco-submarines", vessels carrying tonnes of cocaine that spend weeks making the journey from South America to Europe. - Watch Dateline’s latest episode Inside Spain’s Narco Submarines on 1 April at 9.30pm on SBS or SBS On Demand. - Using submarines to smuggle drugs across the Atlantic was once thought to be a myth. - But in 2019, when the Spanish authorities captured a 'submarine' off the coast of Galicia carrying 3,000kg of cocaine, it marked a turning point, confirming that an underwater drug trafficking route from South America to Europe was real. - Spain is now one of the main gateways of cocaine into Europe. And the port of Galicia is its main point of entry. In 2023 alone, the authorities intercepted 90 tonnes of cocaine, double that of the year before. - While over two-thirds of it was found in shipping containers, drug smugglers are finding more inventive ways. These days, Galicia’s customs officers have to work even harder at sea where they are increasingly up against elusive ocean-crossing narco subs travelling thousands of kilometres from South America. - Narco-subs are now being used frequently and globally. One known route is from Colombia to the Pacific. In November 2024, Colombian authorities seized six semi-submersibles bound for Australia as part of an international operation dubbed Orion, involving 62 countries. - Although Spanish authorities started spotting and seizing narco-subs relatively recently, local drug smuggler Luis (not his real name) says they’ve been arriving in Galicia since 1998. He claims that every month one arrives to Galicia. If he’s right, that would mean over €1 billion ($1.7 billion) worth of cocaine enters the European market a year, just from the narco-subs. - "Only about 5 per cent stays [in Spain]," he said. "The rest goes wherever there is demand. All over Europe basically." - https://lnkd.in/e3e8cW9X Transatlantic Narco Submarine, A Proven Case, November 2019 Source: Sutton, 2020i, © H.I. Sutton New developments during summer 2020 suggest that the Cartels and Organized Crime are actively running their cocaine by help of Narco-Submarines out into the Atlantic Ocean where the ships have different option of how to distribute their narcotic cargo: − Variant A: Going directly to Africa/Europe as has been proven; − Variant B-E: loading cocaine on Yachts or Merchant vessels or Working boats such as Tugboats that are going in both ways (to the east to Africa/Europe or to the West to the USA/Canada (Sutton, 2020g) (figure 10). All variants must be seen as new challenge to law enforcement agencies such as Coast Guard, Customs, Border Forces, the Navy and Military Forces but also for secret services.