The Cartel by Stephen Breen

Author:Stephen Breen
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781844884018
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2017-03-14T04:00:00+00:00

10. Watching the Watchers

‘This is going to take us to a different level.’

Christy Kinahan

Across the sun-scorched southern Spanish coast lie a series of towers known as the SIVE. The Sistema Integrado de Vigilancia Exterior towers are designed to be the country’s eyes and ears over the narrow Strait of Gibraltar, long a favoured channel from North Africa for smugglers of drugs and humans alike.

The towers, which look like very sophisticated CCTV poles, about the size of lighthouses, monitor the seas up to 10km offshore. They use a combination of radar and extremely high-definition FLIR (forward-looking infrared) cameras. Whilst most of Spain’s cocaine is brought in through the jagged, inlet-strewn coastline of Galicia in the north-west, hash is ferried in by low-riding speedboats from North Africa. They aim to get in, dump their wares and take off again before the authorities can react.

The smugglers play a constant game of hide and seek with the overstretched Police and Customs services. At times the traffickers sail directly across the Strait, which is less than nine miles wide at the narrowest point, or they pick the narcotics up from a mother ship sailing backwards and forwards in international waters, until the moment is right to launch.

The odds are usually heavily on the smugglers’ side, particularly when they travel at night. But the cover of darkness was not enough for the cartel, who wanted to tilt the balance even further in its favour.

The cartel planned to hack into the SIVE control centre in Mijas and put the whole network out of action. This would allow the gang’s own suppliers to land their drugs from Morocco without the risk of being seized. As an added bonus, the service could possibly also be rented out to other trusted smugglers.

The Policía Nacional knew nothing about this plan until they came across surveillance-style photos on a pen drive seized at the home of the cartel’s main counter-surveillance expert. He was an Englishman that Christy consulted on electronic and other anti-tracking strategies. The pair would chat regularly about technical matters, with the Englishman attending counter-terrorism fairs across Europe, to scout for the most up-to-date technology which could be used by the cartel.

Having listened in on conversations between the pair, cops anticipated finding security cameras and other assorted equipment in his house. Detectives were surprised, however, when they opened the drive and recognized the images of the SIVE towers in Estepona and of the system’s control centre in the mountains outside Mijas. There were also pictures of what would become known as ‘the man with the pliers’.

Further searches at the Englishman’s home uncovered a radar signal interception device and technical details of the FLIR cameras and their thermal sensors. Other items discovered included photos of backup power generators at the Mijas control centre, images of a van with the livery used by the company outsourced to maintain the SIVE towers, and shots of their operatives at work, all taken with a long-distance lens.

The discovery came as a considerable shock to police, who had no idea of the scope of the cartel’s plans.

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