International criminal gang of forty arrested for allegedly stealing 118 cars in Spain

FORTY people have been arrested in connection with the theft of 118 vehicles in Spain which were then transported to France to sell them.

The Guardia Civil arrested eight of the 40 detainees in France and the rest of them in Spain. Sixty-one of the 188 vehicles stolen were recovered in France.

Guardia Civil sources claim the suspected criminal gang would have earned around €4,500,000 judging by the quality and quantity of the stolen vehicles.

Operation Volteda-Duplare began last year when police were alerted to a stolen car in an MOT garage in Madrid that appeared to have been transported to Spain from Germany to get illegally certified.

The criminal group had reportedly found identical cars to the ones that they had stolen and switched their paperwork and number plate for those of the stolen cars so there were two cars in Spain with the same registration.

They detainees were apprehended following a collaboration effort between Spanish and French authorities who had listed several stolen vehicles as suspicious under similar circumstances.