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Date Published: 01/07/2024

VIDEO: 12 arrested for smuggling UK cars to Spain to be scrapped

ARCHIVED ARTICLE -

Thousands of vehicles have been illegally scrapped in the Spanish facility over the last 5 years, without permission

#OperacionesGC Descubierto un desguace que introducía vehículos del #ReinoUnido sin autorización

➡️Se ha detenido a 12 🚶🏽
➡️Operaron con más de 5.000 🚘

Esta actividad fue detectada por especialistas fiscales de la Guardia Civil de #Santander

ℹ️⤵️https://t.co/XoyWIGHLoB pic.twitter.com/xAOx0u77bQ
— Guardia Civil (@guardiacivil) July 1, 2024

Spain’s Guardia Civil police, in collaboration with the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF), have arrested 12 people in what they’re calling Operation ‘Dashboard’ for a scheme which smuggled cars from the UK to Spain to be scrapped without the proper permits.

Six searches have been carried out in homes, a scrapyard and a warehouse in the town of Villagarcía de Arousa (Pontevedra, northwest Spain).

The operation began when the Guardia Civil noted that that a suspicious number of lorries were arriving loaded in the Port of Santander (Cantabria) with vehicles coming from the United Kingdom and destined for a scrapyard in Villagarcía de Arousa.

While most of the cars came into the Port of Santander, some also came into other ports in Spain and across the Channel Tunnel in Calais, France.

Police were able to discover that, since new Brexit rules were put in place in 2019, a total of 424 vehicles (more than 600,000 kilos of scrap metal) have arrived in Spain destined for this scrapyard, where they were to scrapped.

The only problem is, they didn’t have the necessary licences.

Vehicles coming from the United Kingdom which are destined to be scrapped must have the relevant authorisations from the environmental authorities in Spain, relating to “cross-border shipments of waste,” according to the Guardia Civil.

Including Spanish and European cars, the scrapyard received more than 5,000 vehicles over the last five years which had not been fully decontaminated and remained with different types of waste such as oils, brake fluids, air conditioning fluids, etc.

These fluids (tetrafluoroethanes) become volatile on contact with air and can stay in the atmosphere for up to 14 years. That is why there are strict rules for scrapping cars, which the Spanish scrapyard was bypassing.

Furthermore, the warehouse connected to the case was found to be housing more than 4,000 used tyres, which the owner was trying to sell on second hand, even though he didn’t have a permit either to store them or to sell them.

The investigation has been led by the Court of First Instance and Instruction No. 1 of Villagarcía de Arousa, and promoted by the Environmental Prosecutor’s Office of Pontevedra.

Image: Guardia Civil

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