Criminal ring attempted to ship over 400,000 MDMA pills from Netherlands to Chile
A criminal ring of Dominican citizens attempted to ship 474,322 MDMA pills and 120 kilograms of granulated MDMA from the Netherlands to a port in Chile. They were apprehended by an international team, including the Dutch and Chilean police, according to Fiscalía de Chile. Ecuadoran police also caught a large shipment of cocaine in June as it was about to be sent to the Netherlands.
In early April, Dutch authorities found 200,000 doses of MDMA in a false bottom of a mobile home that was bound for Chile. They were instructed by the Public Prosecution Service (OM) to substitute some of the substance and deliver it to its final location in order to catch the people behind it.
The responsible group also hid 149,560 doses of MDMA in a compressor in the port of Antwerp several days later and sent it to Chile. In May, they hid another 324,762 doses of the drug in the false bottom of three different vehicles, which they sent from another Belgian port to Chile.
After the drug shipments reached Chile, they were completely substituted and delivered to the receivers. Two of the receivers had traveled from the Netherlands and Spain to get the drugs.
The five suspects were charged with illicit drug trafficking. They are in pretrial detention.
“We must highlight the inter-institutional coordinated work…which is fundamental when it comes to confronting organized crime, and [collaboration] with the Dutch police, since it was an international investigation in which special techniques allowed by law were used,” said chief prosecutor Paola Apablaza, according to Fiscalía de Chile.
In another case, Ecuadoran police intercepted five metric tons and 187 kilograms of cocaine in two containers of bananas bound for the Netherlands and Turkey in June. The drug shipments were found at a port in the city of Guayaquil, according to the police. The estimated entire capture of the Ecuadoran police, including this shipment, was 8,354 kilograms, with an estimated street value in Europe of over 300 million euros.