Police seize a major consignment of black cocaine designed to deceive the drug sniffer dogs

• A drug gang was disguising cocaine as charcoal by changing the color and removing the scent.
• Spanish and Portuguese began investigating after a company's front organizations didn't make sense.
• Police tracked the drugs to the gang's base where 3 three people were arrested and the cocaine was seized.

Police in Spain have arrested three people after they seized 860 kilos of black, odorless cocaine disguised as charcoal to trick the sniffer dogs.

Spanish and Portuguese police noticed that a company had several front companies to conduct imports that did not add up with their supposed business plans.

The police managed to trace the business to a notorious Basque drug trafficker, who had previously been under arrest for 11 months in Bolivia.

"The modus operandi involved using a complex chemical process to camouflage the drugs as charcoal, a process that was carried out by the Mexican and Colombian cartels who supplied the alleged kingpin," the Spanish police force said, as reported by the Guardian.

"The drug became almost undetectable because its shape and color were so similar to that of charcoal. Furthermore, the characteristic smell of cocaine had been eliminated, meaning specialist narcotics dogs couldn't pick it up."

The drug gang had placed 30 sacks of cocaine disguised as charcoal amongst 1,364 sacks of actual charcoal to make the drugs harder to detect on two containers.

The Spanish and Portuguese police tracked the containers transported via trucks to the gang's base in northern Spain. As soon as the lorries arrived, police emerged and arrested three people and seized the huge haul of distinctive black cocaine.

"This operation is of great relevance for the Security Forces and Bodies, not only because of the arrest of a historic drug trafficker but also because it is one of the largest cocaine seizures recorded in Castilla y León," the police said.