Mossos and Guardia Civil in international operation against Camorra mafia

Officers from the Spanish Guardia Civil and the Catalan Mossos d’Esquadra took part in an international operation against the Italian Camorra crime syndicate in the early hours of Wednesday morning. A score of people were arrested in the joint operation under suspicion of laundering drug money through the hostelry sector and the sale of cars and jewelry. Based mostly in Barcelona, some 15 of the arrests were made in the Catalan capital and surroundings.

During the operation officers seized 520 kilos of cocaine and 450 kilos of cannabis, while Spain’s Audiencia Nacional high court ordered the seizure of assets worth five million euros. Under supervision of Spain’s Anti-corruption Prosecutor, the operation included the participation of the Guardia Civil’s UCO unit, officers from the Mossos’ DIC unit, as well as Italian and German police, who carried out raids in their respective countries.

The suspects arrested are accused of organised crime, money laundering and drug trafficking. Most of those arrested are Italian, but the suspects also include people from Spain, Colombia, Venezuela and Chile.

Police recruitment drive

The joint operation between the Spanish and Catalan police forces comes against the backdrop of the Catalan executive’s decision to open an urgent recruitment drive to take on 505 new police officers. The government ratified the call for more officers on Tuesday, with the aim of carrying out the recruitment in July. What’s more, the executive decision aims to circumvent the Spanish tax department’s injunction of a previous police recruitment process by including the 505 new places in the April 18 agreement for 7,700 public servants. In mid-June, the Spanish authorities rejected the Catalan executive’s plans to take on 550 new officers, arguing that the budget allowed for only 50.  

Justifying the decision as “avoiding legal problems”, government spokesperson, Neus Munté, described the recruitment call as "an urgent and non-deferrable need for personnel in order to reinforce public safety in Catalonia." It has been six years since the last recruitment of new police officers.

The agreements reached by the bilateral Security Board foresee the need for an extra 1,500 officers in order to guarantee public safety. In fact, the Board is set to meet on Monday after a hiatus of eight years. However, Munté was unwilling to reveal any planned details of the bilateral meeting with the Spanish Minister for Home Affairs, and restricted her answer to questions about the negotiations over Mossos numbers saying: "I understand that this is a question that will have to be discussed.” The spokesperson also stressed the need for police forces to be able to share information, especially because of the terrorist threat, after the Spanish authorities denied the Catalan police further access to Europol databases at the end of June.