Eight men charged after one of Valencia’s biggest ever drug hauls

Sentencing has been released in the trial of the eight men charged after one of Valencia’s biggest ever drug hauls, three and a quarter tons of cocaine found in a lorry-load of bananas in the El Altet area of Elche four years ago. Total sentencing in the case amounts to more than 77 years and the smugglers will also have to pay the value the drug would have brought on the black market: more than 112 million €.The longest terms went to six of the suspects, who admitted their guilt and accepted sentences of 11 years, with two of them also getting another six months each for falsifying documents. Two others claimed they had got lost looking for a car boot sale and were only at the warehouse where police swooped by mistake, but the court ruled it proved that their role in the smuggling operation was to distribute the cocaine. They received terms of five years and four months each.