Four held as 65 bales of cannabis resin seized in sea chase off Gibraltar
Royal Gibraltar Police and HM Customs Gibraltar chased a rigid inflatable boat through British Gibraltar Territorial Waters on 18 August 2021, recovering 65 bales of cannabis resin weighing 2,236.25 kg. Four men were arrested; they later admitted possessing the cannabis and were jailed, while import charges ended in acquittal and a dismissed appeal.
🇬🇮 British Gibraltar Territorial Waters, off the western side of the Rock · Gibraltar
On 18 August 2021, four men in a rigid inflatable boat powered by three Yamaha engines carried 65 bales of cannabis resin through British Gibraltar Territorial Waters toward the Spanish coast.[1]Royal Gibraltar Police vessel Bravo 3 pursued them until they left Gibraltar waters, recovering 15 bales the crew had jettisoned; when the boat re-entered, the Customs ship HMC Searcher took up the chase.[1]After more bales were thrown overboard and the vessels collided, officers boarded the boat and arrested all four men.[1]The RGP put the haul at about 2.6 tonnes of cannabis worth around £13 million.[2]
The men pleaded guilty in November 2022 to possessing the cannabis and received prison terms of between three years and two months and three years and four months; one of them admitted damaging HMC Searcher and received an additional month.[1]They were acquitted of importing the drugs in January 2023, and the Court of Appeal dismissed the Attorney-General’s challenge to those acquittals on 15 March 2024, with no retrial to follow.[1]
Case data
Every number and detail the sources state, with the sources that state it.
Arrested
4
Convicted
4
Acquitted
4
Cannabis
2.23625 t
Value (official estimate)
GBP 13,000,000
Agencies
Royal Gibraltar Police; HM Customs Gibraltar
Agency type
Police, Customs
Cannabis
Hashish (2.23625 t)
Activity
Trafficking
Setting
Vehicle
Charges
importing 2236.25kg of cannabis; possessing cannabis
A 42-year-old man received an £800 fine after police found about 127 grams of cannabis resin during a foot patrol. He appeared in the Magistrates’ Court the morning after his arrest and was charged with possession of a Class B drug. The case came under the current criminal code, which allows fines or imprisonment for possession.
The police authority’s 2024/25 table records 169 possession offences and 22 supply offences across all drugs. Its report describes enforcement ranging from possession fines to prison for trafficking.
A driver was fined £250 and disqualified for eight months after testing at not less than 3.8 micrograms of THC per litre of blood. Police had stopped his erratically driven car in November 2023.
HM Customs officers seized 1.5 tons of cannabis resin from a rigid-hulled boat that struck a reef off Sandy Bay on 25 July 2015 and held three men. On 24 November 2015 the Supreme Court sentenced two of them to eight years in prison each and forfeited the drugs and the boat.