Drug Traffickers Use Helicopters to Smuggle Hashish from Morocco to Spain

A week ago, the Guardia Civil dismantled a hashish trafficking network by helicopters from Morocco to Spain. In total, five members, including the pilot, Vitor Blaha, of Ukrainian origin, were arrested. The latter was carrying out several low-altitude night flights with a reconditioned helicopter to clandestinely introduce large shipments of hashish from Morocco to Spain, reports El Español.

On January 15, the Civil Guard of Malaga and the Royal Gendarmerie of Morocco followed the route of a narco-flight that entered Moroccan airspace, remained there for a few minutes before returning to Spain where it was intercepted upon landing on a farm located in the town of Chiclana de la Frontera (Cádiz). The pilot had just transported 30 bales of hashish weighing 795 kilos from Morocco, which the other members were preparing to unload into three vehicles. The drugs, as well as the vehicles, were seized.

According to the Civil Guard investigators, Vitor Blaha and the other arrested persons are experts in low-altitude night flights. They are called upon for their expertise by drug trafficking networks to transport hashish from Morocco by air. The investigators began monitoring Vitor Blaha in mid-2023, after the competent Moroccan services alerted the Guardia Civil to a helicopter accident in the Tangier region.

The investigators discovered that the Ukrainian pilot owns properties on the Costa del Sol and was in charge of carrying out narco-flights in the Strait of Gibraltar on behalf of a criminal organization that had two helicopters, one hidden on a farm in Seville and the other on a farm in Cádiz. According to sources from the anti-drug department of the Ministry of the Interior, pilots like Blaha could earn up to 150,000 euros per trip, which lasts barely an hour.