Spain’s Civil Guard guard was acting on information provided by U.S. and Dutch authorities when it seized a ship last week carrying more than 30 tons of cocaine worth over $954 million, according to a court document obtained by OCCRP.

After the Civil Guard’s association announced the bust on social media, Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska told reporters it was “one of the biggest, not only nationally but internationally.”

The Spanish court document — an “order of imprisonment” — describes the scene that special forces commandos found when they boarded the freighter on May 1 as it navigated international waters off West Africa.

“Hidden in the bow area,” they discovered a Surinamese man and five Dutch men carrying rifles and pistols. The court document does not mention the men putting up any resistance. 

Behind a metal door in the stern, officers found approximately 30 tons of cocaine in 1,279 packages. 

Spanish authorities had received a tip from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and the Criminal Intelligence Team of the Dutch police informing them that the vessel planned to offload the cocaine into several high-powered speedboats on the high seas. The boats would then run the cocaine to the Iberian peninsula, according to the court document. 

Aside from the six armed men on the boat, the Civil Guard guard arrested 17 Filipino seamen. All 23 are facing charges in Spain, including drug trafficking, illegally possessing weapons, and belonging to a criminal organization, the document says.

The ship, called the Arconian, was apprehended in international waters off the coast of Western Sahara, a disputed territory largely controlled by Morocco. The Civil Guard then escorted it to port in Canary Islands, which is an autonomous community of Spain.

The Arconian flies the flag of the East African island nation of Comoros. Until February, it had been flagged in Sierra Leone, according to the International Maritime Organization, a United Nations agency. 

The agency lists the Arconian’s owner as a Sierra Leonean company. Official ship tracking data shows that the Arconian left Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, on April 22 and was heading to the Libyan port of Benghazi.  

Sierra Leone is a major hub for cocaine shipped or flown to West Africa, where it is divided up and sent onwards, mainly to western Europe, according to organizations including the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). 

A study published in March by the European Union said traffickers have taken advantage of West Africa’s “porous borders” as well as “high levels of corruption within port authorities, security services, and political structures.”

Sierra Leone’s government in February announced 52 convictions related to drug trafficking and organized crime, saying they posed “a serious threat to national security.”

More recently, Libya has emerged as a transit point for cocaine traffickers, according to a January report by UNODC. Drugs transiting Libya are mainly destined for south and southeastern Europe, as well as feeding “the increasing market for cocaine in the Middle East,” the report says.

Libyan authorities did not respond to emailed requests for comment, and no officials answered publicly available phone numbers. 

The seizure last week was more than twice as large as Spain’s previous record of 13 tons discovered last year in a shipment of bananas from Ecuador, Reuters reported. It’s also a record haul for Europe. The largest bust previously recorded took place in June 2024 in Hamburg, where German police seized 25 tons of cocaine. 

The latest operation has dealt a “historic blow to drug trafficking,” the Civil Guard association said on X.

Research and data expertise was provided by OCCRP’s Research & Data Team.

 

 

European lawmakers are pressuring the European Commission this week to stop an alumina refinery in Ireland from supplying material used to make Russian weapons deployed in the war on Ukraine.

European Parliament Vice President Pina Picierno submitted a formal written question to the Commission on Wednesday, asking if it intends to include alumina exports in its sanctions list “given its documented use in the Russian military industry.”

“It is unacceptable that, while the EU funds Ukraine’s defence, a Russian-owned company operates undisturbed within a Member State, supplying the Kremlin’s military industry,” Picierno wrote in her statement.

Picierno cited a report by OCCRP and its partners iStories, KibOrg, De Tijd, the Irish Times, the Guardian, and Delfi detailing the supply chain of Aughinish Alumina, Europe’s largest alumina refinery. Alumina is a material refined from bauxite ore, often used in the smelting of aluminum and as an extremely hard industrial ceramic.

The investigation by OCCRP and its partners found that since 2023, the Irish facility has sent more than half of its alumina exports to Russian smelters owned by its parent company, the Russian aluminum giant Rusal. Because EU sanctions currently ban the import of Russian aluminum but do not restrict the export of alumina to Russia, the shipments remain entirely legal.

According to the investigation, the Russian smelters subsequently sold more than $650 million worth of aluminum to a Moscow-based trader. That trader, in turn, supplied more than 40 Russian arms companies that are currently under EU sanctions.

In a similar move, Dutch MEP Bart Groothuis wrote in a post on X: “It is irresponsible how companies like Aughinish Alumina operate in Europe while simultaneously aiding the Russian arms industry. 

In his post, he shared a March 27 letter he sent to the Commission’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs Kaja Kallas and European Commissioner for Trade Maroš Šefčovič calling for a ban on both the export and import of aluminum to and from Russia, also citing the OCCRP investigation. Groothuis stated he is currently awaiting a reply.

In response to previous inquiries following the investigation, Commissioner Šefčovič issued a statement that addressed only the ban on aluminum imports from Russia. He noted that existing restrictions were extended under the 14th sanctions package to cover primary aluminum, resulting in an import ban effective from February 26, 2026.

“EU sanctions are regularly evaluated. Decisions to amend existing sanctions or to introduce new sanctions must be taken by the Council by unanimous vote,” Šefčovič said.

The parliamentarians’ statements are part of a growing effort to press the EU into closing this particular loophole allowing for the supply of Russian weapons manufacturers. Following the release of the OCCRP investigation, Belgian Foreign Minister Maxime Prévot announced that Belgium would lobby the EU to expand its sanctions regime to ensure that raw materials produced in Europe cannot be repurposed for the Russian war effort.

In Ireland, a government spokesperson told the Irish Times that authorities were “aware of reports relating to Aughinish Alumina,” were taking them “very seriously,” and were actively examining the issues raised. 

Russian authorities have seized control of a major agricultural producer, saying its billionaire founder violated anti-corruption rules while serving as a senator, and accusing him in a separate criminal case of embezzlement — allegations he rejects.

A Moscow court ordered billionaire Vadim Moshkovich, his family members, and former Rusagro chief executive Maxim Basov to transfer a controlling stake in the company to the state, Russia’s state news agency, Interfax reported. 

Prosecutors framed the seizure as an anti-corruption action linked to Moshkovich’s time in Russia’s Federation Council, while a separate criminal case accuses him of embezzling around $400 million.

Both men deny any wrongdoing, according to Interfax. Basov’s lawyer said he would appeal the ruling, which he characterized as “unfair, unfounded and illegal.” 

Rusagro is one of Russia’s largest agricultural producers, with operations in sugar, pork, oil-and-fats, and farming. The seizure places a major food-sector asset under state control as Russian authorities have expanded the use of courts and prosecutors to take over private companies.

Nikolai Petrov, a consulting fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House, told OCCRP that the case fits into a wider wartime redistribution of property, rather than a simple campaign against Kremlin opponents.

Moshkovich was not an obvious anti-Kremlin figure. He served in Russia’s Upper House of Parliament from 2006 to 2014, and attended a Kremlin meeting with President Vladimir Putin on the day Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He was later sanctioned by the European Union, which said he had expressed support for the war. 

Moshkovich challenged the sanctions at the EU General Court, arguing that he was not part of Putin’s inner circle. The case was dismissed in December 2023, and he appealed that ruling. The court has not yet posted a final ruling on the dismissal.

Petrov said the Russian state’s approach to property has changed significantly since the full-scale invasion. The Kremlin is no longer targeting only disloyal figures, but overseeing a broader redistribution. These days, he said, major assets can be vulnerable even when their owners have not openly opposed Putin.

Russian prosecutors initiated 17 confiscation cases in 2022, another 40 in 2023, and 37 in 2024, according to an article in the Russian Analytical Digest, which is published by several research institutions. Prosecutors launched  nearly 70 cases in 2025.

The total value of assets targeted for seizure from early 2022 through late 2025 exceeded 4.99 trillion Russian rubles, or about $58 billion, according to the journal.

The article said the seizures have been justified through a range of legal arguments, including alleged corruption, illegal privatization, foreign ownership, strategic-sector restrictions, and claims that assets were acquired or managed in ways that harmed the state.

Russia has used similar mechanisms before. In the 2000s, tax and criminal cases helped dismantle Yukos, then Russia’s largest private oil company, after the arrest of its chief executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The company was driven into bankruptcy through multibillion-dollar tax claims, and its core assets were later absorbed by state-controlled Rosneft.

After Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, authorities also moved against major private assets. That year, a court ordered the transfer of 81.7 percent of the oil company Bashneft from Vladimir Yevtushenkov’s Sistema to the state after prosecutors challenged the company’s privatization.

In 2023 and 2024, Russia moved against Rolf, one of the country’s largest car dealers: Putin first placed it under state management, and a court later nationalized the company on anti-corruption grounds.

Now, the Rusagro case involves a sanctioned businessman with past ties to the Russian political system, and a company operating in a strategic sector. Analysts say it shows how wartime Russia is redefining property rights, making large private assets increasingly conditional on political protection and usefulness to the state. 

While the Kremlin once used nationalisation to target political opponents, “there are no disloyal or non-systemic actors left in Russia — neither in politics nor in business,” Petrov said. 

That leaves even loyalists vulnerable to more powerful actors who covet their resources, he added, using a Russian idiom: “Everyone still wants to eat.”

In Somalia’s Puntland region, dried out watering holes, animal carcasses and old pots filled with ash have become part of the landscape as worsening drought conditions deepen a growing hunger crisis.

An Israeli airstrike overnight on the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital Beirut has sparked a new wave of displacement among civilians already impacted by months of conflict, the United Nations said on Thursday.