A scheme to steal naphtha, a material derived from petroleum, was dismantled in the early hours of Tuesday (27), in the metropolitan region of Salvador (BA).
According to the Civil Police, the leader of the criminal organization, an intermediary of the transactions and a buyer of the product were arrested in flagrante delicto on the BR-523 highway, while transporting 126 thousand liters of naphtha in three tanker trucks.
The scheme, considered large-scale by the police, had been going on for about a year and a half and worked as follows: when the ships loaded with the product approached the port of Aratu, in Candeias, the members of the criminal association made a payment of around R$250,000 to those responsible for the vessel and diverted the material while still at sea, using a clandestine ferry.
According to the investigation, the loaded ferry docked at the side of the port, where tanker trucks were filled and left taking most of the naphtha to a warehouse in the Caroba neighborhood and eventually to warehouses in other nearby cities such as Camaçari and Dias d’Ávila.
For the director of the Metropolitan Police Department, Arthur Gallas, “there is strong evidence that this same location is used and rented jointly between the criminal association and drug traffickers to send drugs abroad, via ships”.
The operation is a result of the arrest of a member of a criminal organization, whose warrant was served last Tuesday (20), in Feira de Santana, 100 km from Salvador. Suspected of several homicides, robberies, drug trafficking and fuel embezzlement, the man is identified as the controller of a cooperative that operates in Caroba, where he also controlled all irregular transactions that occurred in the port of Aratu.
This content was originally published in Group that diverted oil derivatives on the high seas is dismantled in Bahia on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
I’m James Harper, a highly experienced and accomplished news writer for World Stock Market. I have been writing in the Politics section of the website for over five years, providing readers with up-to-date and insightful information about current events in politics. My work is widely read and respected by many industry professionals as well as laymen.
