– The criminal group dismantled by officers from the Border Guard Post in Zgorzelec operated at least from 2019 until May 2021, when Border Guard officers from the Zgorzelec Post discovered 58 kilograms of cannabis worth PLN 2.6 million on the black market in the driver’s cab during a truck inspection, reports Major of the Border Guard Joanna Konieczniak, press spokesperson for the Nadodrzański Border Guard Unit.
The officers launched an investigation supervised by the District Prosecutor’s Office in Jelenia Góra.
How did the criminals operate?
The operation followed strictly defined rules. The officers stated that:
The group required tractor units with modifications made in their cabs to enable drugs to be concealed; each compartment could hold between 40 and 55 kilograms of drugs. The tractor units with trailers traveled to Spain for transport purposes, and on the return journey, during a required stop, the vehicles were loaded with cannabis.
When the vehicles carrying the contraband returned to Poland, they drove to an agreed location, where the drugs were unloaded in specially prepared rooms.
Based on the collected evidence, the District Prosecutor’s Office in Jelenia Góra submitted an indictment to the court last week against four members of an organized criminal group. The defendants are residents of the Podkarpackie and Małopolskie Voivodeships, aged between 32 and 47. It was established that they smuggled more than 2.5 tonnes of drugs into Poland, with a black-market value of PLN 116,325,000.
All four face between one and as many as ten years in prison.