Secret narco submarine building shipyard for drug cartels busted in Colombia

A drug trafficking organisation building narco submarines for cartels has been busted by authorities.

Colombian officials revealed 12 people were arrested for their involvement in the group including its leaders, identified only by their aliases "Pulga" and "Iván."

A third person, "Bernardo", who was in charge of the group’s finances and "the commercialisation of cocaine with drug trafficking structures in Europe and Central America," was also arrested, the government said.

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The narco submarines are often used to move drugs across the world, both to other South American countries like Brazil and Guyana and further afield.

Law enforcement in Colombia found "clandestine shipyards" where the subs were being built along the coasts of the Cauca and Nariño departments, while the group itself was based in the port city of Buenaventura, about 300 miles southwest of Bogota.

Authorities believe the group made the submarines for a number of cartels and were not aligned with any one group.

Homemade submarines have been used to traffic illegal drugs out of South America for decades – in 2021, another 31 Colombian narco subs were seized, up from 23 in 2019, according to InSight Crime.

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In 2022, law enforcement officials captured Óscar Moreno Ricardo, who had spent the two decades building narco subs for various cartels around Latin America.

Small crews will usually pack the submarines full of drugs before setting off for journeys that can often take weeks in a bid to go unnoticed by authorities.

However, the practice isn't without risk – in mid-March, a makeshift sub was found floating off the coast of Colombia with two tonnes of cocaine and two dead bodies on board.

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Two more men were found alive on the underwater vessel but had reportedly fallen ill after the ship's fuel released poisonous gas into the air on board.

And the subs aren't the only creative way underground groups are transporting drugs – pigeons carrying crystal meth in tiny makeshift "backpacks" were recently found to be plaguing a prison in Abbotsford, Canada.

The incident left police scratching their heads as they struggled to work out how inmates were managing to pull off the stunt.

John Randle, the president of the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers’ Pacific region, said: “The inmates, they will throw bread or whatever it is to feed the birds, which could have probably led to all of this happening.”

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