Operation Cerbero nets 3.5 tonnes of creepy marijuana in Chile
Carabineros and the Navy seized 3,500 kg of Colombian creepy marijuana and arrested ten suspects in Operation Cerbero, coordinated by the Valparaíso prosecutor after months of investigation. The ten were remanded in custody in Viña del Mar; the haul was valued at more than 11.2 billion pesos.
🇨🇱 Viña del Mar, Valparaíso region · Chile
Arrested
10
Charged
10
Cannabis
3.5 t
Vehicles confiscated
4
Agencies
🇨🇱Carabineros de Chile, Chilean Maritime Authority (DIRECTEMAR) maritime police +1
On 2 December 2021 Chile’s Interior Ministry announced that Operation Cerbero, months of work coordinated by the Valparaíso regional prosecutor with the Navy’s Directemar maritime-intelligence unit and Carabineros’ OS7 anti-drug department, had broken up an international organisation moving drugs by sea between Colombia and central Chile.[1]Run by Colombian nationals resident in Chile, the organisation supplied smaller distribution groups across Chilean neighbourhoods; the operation took 3,500 kilos of creepy marijuana off the market, valued by the authorities at more than 11,200 million pesos or about ten million doses, the biggest seizure of the last two to three years.[1]
Ten remanded in Viña del Mar
Ten suspects were arrested and formally charged on the Wednesday, 1 December, at the Viña del Mar Guarantee Court, and all were remanded in preventive prison for a 90-day investigation.[1]The operation also seized four vehicles, almost two million Chilean pesos in cash and 150,000 Colombian pesos.[1]
Biggest seizure of 2021
BioBioChile’s January 2022 review of maritime trafficking named the 3.5-tonne December seizure in Valparaíso by Directemar as the biggest of the year.[2]Maritime authorities seized 7,353 tonnes of drugs in Chilean waters in 2021, 6,916 of them processed marijuana, a 62 percent rise on 2020, detaining 380 people in 234 operations.[2]
Case data
Every number and detail the sources state, with the sources that state it.
The ministry statement gives 1 December as the day the ten suspects were formally charged in Viña del Mar, but no separate date for the seizures themselves.
The statement reports almost two million Chilean pesos and 150,000 Colombian pesos seized without an exact Chilean-peso figure, so no cash total is recorded.
The release names no precise place where the 3.5 tonnes were found beyond the Valparaíso-coordinated operation in central Chile.
No court outcome beyond the 90-day investigation period and preventive detention was reported.
Detectives of the PDI's anti-narcotics brigade in Temuco arrested a passenger for drug trafficking after a drug-detection dog alerted to him at the city's interurban bus terminal and his unchecked suitcase went on to Puerto Montt. With a judicial authorisation the PDI opened the suitcase at the Puerto Montt terminal and found 5 kilos 835 grams of cannabis.
OS7 Coquimbo officers seized 206.546 kg of processed marijuana from a white Chevrolet Prisma at the Guanaqueros toll entrance on 12 November 2026. Carabineros valued the 198 packages and a bag at more than 1,650 million pesos, equal to over 413,000 doses.
An anti-drug team in Punta Arenas seized 35 bottles of yellow cannabis concentrate, totalling 519.74 grams and confirmed by a field THC test, from a parcel sent from the Metropolitan Region. A minor who went to collect it was detained the same day, and an abreviado hearing was set for 17 December.
The PDI intercepted 12 kilograms of cannabis sativa sent by parcel from the Metropolitan Region to Coyhaique and valued by police at more than 198 million pesos. Investigators say a prisoner serving a drug-trafficking sentence in Coyhaique prison coordinated the shipments, and the man arrested collecting the parcels was placed in preventive detention.
