Spanish
police arrest ex-fraud chief after €20m found in walls of his house
Investigation
into country’s largest cocaine bust reveals cash in home of former head of
anti-money laundering
Agence
France-Presse in Madrid
Tue 12 Nov
2024 21.18 CET
Spain has
arrested one of its top police officers after €20m (£17m) was found hidden in
the walls of his house, as part of an investigation into the country’s
largest-ever cocaine bust.
Óscar
Sánchez Gil was until recently the head of the fraud and anti-money laundering
division of Spain’s national police force in Madrid.
Officers
arrested him last week along with 15 other people, including his romantic
partner, who is also a police officer in the Madrid region, a police source
said without naming her.
During the
raid, police found the €20m, in cash, hidden in the walls and ceilings of the
couple’s home in Alcalá de Henares, a town of about 195,000 inhabitants located
18 miles (30km) east of the Spanish capital.
Officers
also found €1m in his office, hidden in two locked cupboards, in bills of
€50-500, according to the police source.
The couple
have been charged with drug trafficking, money-laundering, corruption and
membership of a criminal organisation after last week appearing before a Madrid
court, which remanded them in custody, a judicial source said.
Spanish
media said the arrests were linked to the seizure last month of 13 tonnes of
cocaine that arrived in the southern port of Algeciras from Ecuador’s largest
city Guayaquil – a drug-trafficking hub – hidden among crates of bananas.
Police said
the drug bust – which they only announced last week – is the largest-ever haul
of cocaine in Spain and “one of the largest seizures in the world”.
The
container was destined for a Spanish importer based in the south-eastern
coastal town of Alicante “who had been receiving large quantities of fruit
imported from Ecuador for years”, the authorities said.
Police
searched several homes and offices in Madrid and Alicante after the cocaine
seizure. These operations uncovered links between the importer and Sánchez Gil,
according to Spanish media reports.
He was
already under suspicion by his colleagues who had tapped his phone, daily
newspaper El Mundo reported.
The
father-of-three, who is in his 40s and lives in a brick house protected by
metal gates, is suspected of having worked for the drug traffickers for “at
least five years”, a source told the newspaper.
During these
years, he allegedly provided them with information on the surveillance of
containers in Spanish ports, which enabled them to avoid checks, according to a
source close to the investigation.
While his
lifestyle was not ostentatious, the large sums of money found in his home led
police officers quoted by El Mundo to compare his house “to that of Pablo
Escobar”, the notorious Colombian drug baron who was shot dead by police in
1993.
A nephew of
Escobar once said he found a plastic bag with money worth $18m hidden in the
wall of one of his uncle’s houses.
Part of the
money Sánchez Gil amassed in recent years was laundered through the purchase of
crypto-currencies and a large fleet of private hire vehicles registered in the
name of one of his relatives, El Mundo reported.
Spain is a
main entry point for drugs into Europe because of its close ties with former
colonies in Latin America such as major cocaine producers Colombia and Peru,
and its proximity to Morocco, a top cannabis producer.
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