The Customs Surveillance patrol boat Sacre boarded the Panamanian-flagged fishing vessel Albatros Guard VSL about 170 miles south-west of Gran Canaria in the early hours of 27 March 2021.[1] Officers found a large number of bales of hashish on board, estimated at nearly 18,000 kilos, and arrested the three crew members, all Ukrainian nationals.[1]
The 23-metre vessel had sailed from Den Oever in the Netherlands on 7 December 2020 and was first spotted by a Customs Surveillance aircraft travelling south along the Galician coast.[1] Analysts flagged it as suspicious because of its age, recent sale and change of flag, and above all the absence of fishing gear, and tracked it for four months before the boarding.[1]
The patrol boat escorted the seized vessel to the Las Palmas Naval Base so the detainees and the drugs could be brought before the courts, under the coordination of the National High Court’s Special Anti-Drugs Prosecutor’s Office and Central Investigating Court No. 6.[1] The investigation, carried out with the MAOC-N, CITCO and French customs investigators, was still ongoing.[1]
