Dismantled in Ávila the largest clandestine workshop in Spain dedicated to manufacturing double bottoms
The Civil Guard has arrested 26 people, the majority of Colombian nationality
The workshop had an assembly line in which specialists worked without being registered and received orders from drug trafficking organizations in Spain and European countries.
After a year of investigation, 16 high-end passenger cars, two vans, three tractors, six semi-trailers and two motorcycles were caught in the middle of manufacturing the "caletas"
The Civil Guard has dismantled in Ávila the largest clandestine workshop in Spain dedicated to the manufacture of double bottoms.
The Caletas operation has concluded with the arrest of 26 people who are charged with the crimes of drug trafficking, money laundering, belonging to a criminal organization and crime against workers.
The workshop had several locations located in isolated areas of Piedralaves and Casavieja (Ávila). The vehicles in which they practiced double bottoms came from all over the national geography, but also from other countries such as France, Belgium, Germany or Italy.
In collaboration with other European police, the investigators detected more than 90 vehicles in which the dismantled workshop had built the double bottoms. In fact, some of the aforementioned vehicles have been intervened in various places, transporting various amounts of drugs in those coves designed in Avila.
In the warehouses, the detainees had set up a real assembly line infrastructure, with a spectacular investment in means – tools, cranes, compressors, cabins, spare parts, upholstery. In addition, they had specialist upholsterers, electricians, forgers, welders, or sheet metal workers, having everything they needed to work on more than ten vehicles at the same time. These workers were in an irregular situation and were not registered.
Depending on its characteristics, each vehicle had a specific kind of "cove" adapted to that model. Some of them of a sophistication rarely seen, with hidden openings, some mechanical and others combined with electrical and hydraulic. In addition, the Civil Guard has detected how they were also manufacturing all kinds of furniture with double bottoms, with characteristics similar to those of vehicles, in order to hide any effect.
SEPRONA has also denounced those responsible for the workshop for lacking any kind of authorization for the irregular treatment of waste that they were taking.
The operation has been developed by the Organized Crime and Anti-Drug Team (EDOA) of the Civil Guard of Ávila, in collaboration with the La Adrada and Sotillo Posts, the Salamanca and Madrid Cynological Service, USECIC, GIAT, SEPRONA, and the ROCA Team of Ávila. The Customs Surveillance Service of the Salamanca Tax Agency has also collaborated. Everything that has been intervened has been made available to the Court of Instruction No. 1 of those of Arenas de San Pedro (Ávila).
For more information, you can contact the Press Office of the Civil Guard in Avila on the phone 650 036 244 and 669841934.
