Falling price of cocaine forces drug traffickers to reuse narco-submarines, say Spanish police
Source: The Guardian
Falling price of cocaine forces drug traffickers to reuse narco-submarines, say Spanish police
Previously vessels would be sunk once they had completed their cargo runs from South America to Europe
Sam Jones in Madrid
Thu 25 Dec 2025 09.00 GMT
Last modified on Thu 25 Dec 2025 09.02 GMT
-snip-
Since then, 10 such subs have been spotted or seized by Spanish police. Until recently, the boats, which cost about €600,000 (£524,000) to build, were used for one-way trips.
But with massive cocaine production leading to market saturation – wholesale prices have halved to €15,000 (£13,000) a kilo over the past few years – drug-traffickers can no longer afford to consign their vehicles to a “narco-sub graveyard” between the Azores and the Canary Islands.
“These semi-submersibles used to head to the area around the Canaries on one-way voyages and they’d then be sunk,” said Alberto Morales, the head of the central narcotics brigade of the Spanish Policía Nacional.
“Back then, the cost of the merchandise in comparison with the cost of the vessel still made doing that very worthwhile – they’d be carrying three or four tonnes minimum, so operating that way was very profitable. But what’s happened lately is that the price of the merchandise is really, really low, so the organisations have, logically, had a rethink.
-snip-
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/25/cocaine-forces-drug-traffickers-narco-submarines-spain