Over 8 quintals of marijuana were seized during the “Ferry Flower” operation of the Guardia di Finanza which took place between Livorno and Sardinia. The drug was hidden in two warehouses in the Gallura countryside that were discovered through the analysis of a chat.
It is one of the largest marijuana seizures ever to occur on the island.
On 29 July, the Livorno Finance Police went into action at the first light of the day with the discovery in Sardinia of 857 kilos of marijuana inflorescences. The search was triggered after the arrest, which took place in the Tuscan port on 21 May, of AC, a Sardinian citizen caught red-handed by the financiers of the 2nd Operating Unit of the Livorno Group during the passenger traffic control service from Olbia.
The man was carrying 20 kilos of marijuana buds with THC levels well above the permitted limits in a car. From that arrest originated the investigations of the “Ferry Flower” operation, directed by the Public Prosecutor's Office at the Court of Livorno.
The investigators went back to various locations in Sardinia, which were then the subject of inspections that made it possible to plan and organize subsequent searches. In the meantime, after the arrest in Livorno, AC had received the precautionary measure of the obligation to stay in Olbia, in order to carry out his work. But the searches confirmed that drug trafficking was much wider.
The blitz at the end of July affected several places on the island. In Telti, two sheds were discovered with 857 kilos of inflorescences hidden in plastic barrels, bags, sacks of cereals - even already packaged for sale - together with the equipment suitable for cleaning and packaging the inflorescences. The place of the blitz would have emerged from a social conversation between AC and FM, the latter with the material availability of the two warehouses. Within the chat were available videos and photos of the buildings and various inflorescences of marijuana and a postal bulletin relating to the supply of electricity to Telti, made out to a company that ceased to exist in 1987 and whose owner had died in 2014. In fact, from the wiretapping it would have emerged that AC had the availability of 8 quintals of cannabis that it could not sell. And the suspect, in his telephone conversations, would always refer to legal hemp sativa, presumably in order to "sidetrack" the investigation. Once it was confirmed that the percentage of THC was above the legal limits, the yellow flames of Livorno seized the marijuana and translated to the prison of Bancali AC and FM
(Unioneonline / ss)