The previous police chief in command of Spain’s financial crimes unit has been arrested after officers discovered €20 million ($21.2 million) stashed within the partitions of his home. The arrest was linked to the nation’s largest ever cocaine bust, native media reported.
Oscar Sanchez Gil was arrested final week together with 15 different individuals, AFP reported on Wednesday, citing Spanish media. The arrests got here a month after 13 tons of cocaine have been present in a container of bananas seized at Spain’s southern port of Algeciras. The haul, which originated in Ecuador, was the biggest ever drug cargo seized in Spain, and the second-largest within the EU, Spain’s Nationwide Police introduced earlier this month.
Officers investigating the cargo rapidly found hyperlinks between the importers and Sanchez Gil, and ordered a search of his house close to Madrid. They discovered €20 million in money hidden within the partitions of the property, and €1 million in his workplace, AFP reported.
Sanchez Gil’s romantic associate, who can be a police officer, was among the many 15 others arrested. The detainees have been charged with drug trafficking, bribery, cash laundering, corruption and membership of a legal group, police sources informed the information company.
Gil had labored within the nationwide police’s narcotics division earlier than main its anti-fraud and money-laundering unit. In response to El Mundo, he used the previous place to make contact with transnational legal gangs, then helped them evade surveillance at Spanish ports. The cash present in his home is believed to be related to this work and to not the newest drug bust, the Spanish newspaper reported.
In response to a police supply, Sanchez Gil is believed to have labored with narcotics traffickers for “no less than 5 years.”
Previous to his arrest, the high-ranking police officer had been suspected of wrongdoing by his colleagues, who tapped his telephone, in keeping with El Mundo’s sources.
The EU is a profitable marketplace for cocaine traffickers, and for six consecutive years a file amount of the drug has been seized on the bloc’s borders, in keeping with a report by the European Union Medicine Company. 100 tonnes of the drug have been intercepted in Spain final 12 months, greater than double the quantity seized in 2022, AFP reported.
The EU’s largest ever drug seizure came about in June, when German police intercepted 35.5 tons of cocaine in Hamburg and within the Dutch port metropolis of Rotterdam.
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