Portugal’s Judicial Police ran Operation Erva Daninha, with about 300 inspectors, against a group accused of putting large quantities of cannabis on European and African markets.[1][2] In the May 2025 raids officers executed 64 search warrants across mainland Portugal and Madeira, with further searches in Spain, Bulgaria and Cyprus, and detained five people, all reported as Portuguese.[1] A 48-year-old man described as one of the leaders was detained in the Netherlands and extradited to Portugal, apparently on 11 September 2025, for a first judicial interrogation.[3] He was described as a specialist in moving cryptoassets on the dark web, in a money-laundering structure with its own cell; other suspects include bank directors, lawyers and accountants.[4]
A medical-cannabis front
Medical cannabis cultivation and export have been allowed in Portugal since 2019.[4] The group allegedly bought pharmaceutical firms and set up licensed medical-cannabis wholesale, import and export companies, then used false documents and certificates to send thousands of kilos to illicit markets.[1][5] Infarmed, the medicines regulator, approved tonnes of medical cannabis for export to Kenya, Congo and Guinea-Bissau, countries with no law on the matter.[4][5] The network is described as a Costa del Sol organisation that moved its base to the Algarve and spread across Portugal to exploit weaknesses at Infarmed.[4] Authorities suspect profits may have funded terrorism through informal money-transfer systems.[4]
Investigators seized about 1.78 tonnes of cannabis at premises in Sardoal and more than 3 tonnes of biomass and flower in warehouses.[5] A laboratory dismantled in central Portugal yielded one tonne of amphetamines, the largest such seizure in the country.[4][6]
The accusation
On 22 May prosecutors charged 24 defendants, 13 people and 11 companies, with criminal association for trafficking, aggravated narcotics trafficking, money laundering and document forgery.[6][5][2] They describe a network with great logistical and financial power, established in Portugal since 2021[6] and led by Dutch and Danish citizens who settled there in 2020.[2] It allegedly bought companies with medical-cannabis licences and changed their officers repeatedly to hide its leaders, diverted cannabis to the European black market, made fraudulent exports to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya and Guinea-Bissau, imported amphetamines for European laboratories, and forged licences, customs declarations and import certificates.[6] Profits were allegedly shared through sham commission contracts, laundered through property, tourism and trading companies with Malaysian financiers, and passed through cryptoassets before returning to banks.[6]
Through Smart Nature, whose legal representative Aldo Vidinha is named as a central figure, the group allegedly moved at least 6,751 kg of cannabis flower under a medical cover, and through Linnaeuspharma it bought Sofex — Farmacêutica, a medicines maker in Massamá, in 2021.[2] Geert Caers allegedly moved more than 30.4 million dollars in cryptoassets on Binance between 2019 and 2024; the indictment documents more than 11 million euros moved through 17 Malaysian front companies, and a forged Guinea-Bissau import certificate dated to expire on 30 February 2024 that passed Infarmed unnoticed.[5] Until May 2025 Infarmed had no systematic checks with authorities abroad to validate import certificates; it says it has since tightened control and inspection.[2]
Two individual defendants, including the man extradited from the Netherlands, are in pre-trial detention[6][5], two are at large under European and international arrest warrants, and the rest await trial at liberty.[6]
