Drugs in the Bank of Spain: Ministry unveils plan to safeguard seized narcotics

A wave of daring raids by drug gangs on legal storehouses to steal - or recover - thousands of kilos of confiscated narcotics from under the authorities' noses has sown seeds of concern among the security forces.

"We're facing a new crime," say sources from the authorities. "Until now we have seen narcos robbing narcos, but not narcos attacking official organizations."

The latest robbery, on New Year's Eve, saw thieves make off with a ton of hashish from the customs office in Huelva in only four minutes. In total, 1,800 kilos of seized heroin, cocaine and hashish have been returned to the streets in recent years as a result of such robberies. And from the five big raids in Andalusia since 2008, not a single gram has been recovered.

A total of 1,800 kilos of seized heroin, cocaine and hashish have been stolen in recent years

To avoid further such cases, the Interior Ministry is now planning to use the Bank of Spain's vault in Cádiz to safeguard packages that have been confiscated along the local coastline. Ministry sources say that modifications currently underway to secure the underground installation will keep even the ghosts out.

Further north in Seville, seized drugs currently stored at different sites in the city will be brought together in a new secure location, which will come into operation later this year.

Now that the Customs Service has been affected for the first time, it is also considering the idea of bringing all its confiscated drugs together "in one single point," according to Treasury sources.

The crisis has had its part to play in the rise of these raids. The Moroccan drug gangs no longer trust their Spanish counterparts and the ensuing difficulties have led some narcotics barons to organize robberies on the warehouses, despite the surveillance cameras.

These are often very well planned: the most recent thieves used balaclavas and gloves and, while they were caught on security camera footage, they left very few clues. The only threads the police normally have to follow are the vehicles used and the printed marks on the packages made by the Moroccan or Colombian producers.

Lax security

In Andalusia, where 38 percent of the drugs confiscated in the country are stored, security at the stores has been particularly lax. To give just one example, a mop handle was discovered being used to block a window in the vehicle pool of the Cádiz subdelegation where up to 30,000 kilos of narcotics were stored in one room, with windows opening out on to several courtyards. Last November a gang entered and made off with 290 kilos of cocaine.

Experts are pushing for reforms that force judges to reduce the time before seized drugs can be disposed of

The problem has several issues, the prickliest of which is the destruction of the drugs, which is often delayed by investigating judges in response to calls for further analysis of the substances from the narcos' lawyers.

Experts are advocating legal reforms to force judges to limit the time before the drugs can be disposed of. The government has made a small step in that direction in the draft bill of the new Penal Code reform.

The reform grants security forces the power to eliminate the seized drugs within one month, unless the judge rules that the bundles must be preserved in their entirety and not just small traces.