Two men arrested in April 2022 in the municipality of Alcobaça for possession of 48 kilograms of cannabis appeared before the Leiria Judicial Court on the 23rd for offenses of human trafficking and aggravated theft.
According to the indictment, men and others whose identity was not obtained by the Public Ministry (MP) from an unspecified date, but before December 1, 2019, as part of the joint execution of a plan for obtaining monetary benefits, “began to devote themselves to planting cannabis plants” , for sale and transfer to third parties.
The defendants, aged 45 and 46, foreigners, occupied a house and warehouse at Estrada Nacional 8 in Alcobaça, starting to live there, and in the warehouse they planted cannabis plants, “the seeds of which they had previously acquired, fertilized them, watered them and looked after them, until they reach adulthood and are ready to be cut and turned into cannabis in the form of pollen, hash resin and leaves, after which they will be sold and given to third parties for a monetary reward.
In the indictment seen by Lusa, the deputy describes what was seized and where (bedrooms, kitchen or living room in the residence and warehouse) on April 12, 2022, when two men were arrested by the National Republican Guard.
In total, “the defendants were in possession of and in possession of 48,835 grams of cannabis/leaves and amounts, equivalent to 19,534 individual doses with a market value of €244,275, taking into account the cost of five euros/gram,” the document says.
The MP refers to the fact that in the warehouse, “a place chosen to hide the illegal activities they carried out”, the defendants built “the entire electrical, irrigation and ventilation system so that the same [plantas de canábis] develop and then transform into a wide variety of forms, from hemp leaves and tops, hemp pollen and resin, commonly known as hashish.
According to the MP, the system put in place by the defendants “was designed to maximize cannabis production with minimal human intervention” so that their presence at the scene would not be noticed.
In order to avoid the economic costs associated with the consumption of electricity necessary for the development of their activities, the defendants or one of their subordinates “made a direct connection to the distribution network”, so that between December 2019 and April 2022 “received the benefit without payment”, consuming electricity in the amount of 23,993.17 euros.
“The defendants were aware of the narcotic properties of the plants they were carrying and knew that they did not have legal authority to grow, buy, sell, possess, embezzle, transport, or in any way handle narcotic products, but they did not refrained from acting, which they did by mutual agreement, ”says the deputy.
According to the deputy, they acted “with the agreed purpose of transferring substances and plants in exchange for a monetary reward”, knowing that “the amount they owned was sufficient to provide them with a profit” on a large scale.
Also, according to the prosecutor’s office, the defendants accused of crimes related to human trafficking and other serious crimes, as well as qualified theft, appropriated the consumed electricity, “without paying the price due.”
Author: Portuguese
Source: CM Jornal
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