Spain Smashes Migrant-Smuggling Gang That Ferried 2,000 People Across the Sea for 600 Million Crowns

Spanish police, working alongside Europol and law enforcement agencies from France, Portugal and Poland, have dismantled a major smuggling network that ferried migrants across the Mediterranean. According to investigators, the group organised at least 64 illegal crossings, transporting around 2,000 people in total and pocketing roughly 600 million crowns in the process.

Seventy-seven people were arrested in Spain, with one more suspect detained in Algeria. Police seized 18 high-speed boats worth more than five million euros combined, which the gang used both to smuggle people and to traffic drugs.

Dangerous crossings, steep prices

Investigators found that the criminal network relied on the same speedboats to run synthetic drugs from Spain to Algeria, then used the return trips to smuggle migrants to the southeastern coast of the Iberian Peninsula and to the island of Ibiza. Smugglers charged up to 12,000 euros (nearly 300,000 crowns) per person, cramming as many as 50 migrants onto a single boat in overcrowded, unsafe conditions. Police say gang members frequently resorted to extremely brutal treatment of the people they were transporting.

Migration routes keep shifting

According to official figures from Spain's Interior Ministry, the number of migrants arriving in Spain by sea between January and July this year fell by 31% compared with the same period last year. The main driver was a sharp drop in arrivals to the Canary Islands, where numbers were down 60% year-on-year, largely thanks to agreements Spain has struck with West African countries.

At the same time, arrivals to mainland Spain and the Balearic Islands have actually risen. Reuters reports that this is because smugglers have shifted part of their routes towards Algeria.

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz