The First Section of the Provincial Court of Castellón has sentenced six members of a criminal clan, “stable and permanent over time,” dedicated to cocaine trafficking and based in the provinces of Valencia and Castellón, to prison sentences ranging from two months to six and a half years for crimes against public health and belonging to a criminal group.
The sentence, issued based on a plea agreement between the parties, is final and comes almost a year and a half after the arrest of three of its leaders. It was on December 18, 2024, when one of the convicted individuals was caught by the National Police driving on the AP-7 highway, from Valencia to Castellón, with seven kilos of cocaine in packages hidden in a raffia supermarket bag he was carrying inside the trunk. The drug had been placed in the vehicle shortly before by two others of those now convicted, the leaders of the organization, who were arrested that same day. The amount of cocaine seized in subsequent searches carried out in the drug traffickers’ homes would have been sold on the illicit market for more than 726,000 euros, according to the ruling made public this Tuesday by the Valencian High Court of Justice.
The Court imposes six and a half years in prison and fines of one million euros on the two Albanian ringleaders. It has agreed to substitute the custodial sentence with expulsion from national territory once two years of imprisonment have been served, according to the ruling. For a third man, of Spanish nationality, who was at a second level of the criminal network and was dedicated to transporting the drug, the penalty is three years and eleven months in prison and a fine of 400,000 euros.
The sentence condemns two other members of the gang to six months in prison, responsible for renting in their name the homes used by the organization’s leaders where the narcotic substance was stored and guarded. It also imposes two months in prison on the sister of one of them as an accomplice to the crime of criminal organization, for helping her relative pay the rent at specific times.
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The ruling considers it proven that the convicted individuals were part of an organization operating in the provinces of Valencia and Castellón, in which all of them had an assigned role, such as leading the gang and obtaining the substances, transporting the drug, or renting homes to guard it and prepare it for sale.
During the house searches carried out in the drug traffickers’ homes, located in the municipalities of l’Eliana and Valencia, different quantities of cocaine and the necessary utensils to prepare it for distribution were found, as well as money from its sale: 26,000 euros divided into 50-euro notes.
The sentence, which is final, orders the confiscation and destruction of the drug and the forfeiture of seized assets and instruments such as two vehicles, money, or telephones, which will be allocated to the prevention, investigation, prosecution, and repression of drug-related crimes, by virtue of Law 17/2023 of May 29.
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