“The important thing for them is to detect that you have vices. So, they try to cajole you, ”says a high command of the fight against drug traffickers in Andalusia. For the traffickers who seek to corrupt the agents of the State security forces, the first thing is to locate the weak points of their objectives: who likes cocaine, who frequents brothels, who loses luxury or who has asked for a destination in zone to earn more money than you put on your payroll.
From there, comes the bait. They invite him to a few grams of white lady, they pay for sex nights, the occasional party with friends... Then, the question: 'Uncle, do you want to earn money helping some of my friends?'
"If he says yes, the bad guys already have someone among the good guys," says this command from the Armed Institute. The next thing is to start cooperating.” Information on ongoing investigations, tips on patrol movements, tips on operations. Anything is valid.
But the passage of time usually ends up betraying the corrupt: expensive cars, luxury hotels, Gucci or Louis Vuitton clothing and bags for women, businesses that came out of nowhere, rich mansions... They are almost never discreet. Money, and even more so when it comes easily and in large amounts, always leaves a trail.
Pablo, a civil guard stationed in La Línea de la Concepción (Cádiz), his hometown, has been suggested more than once to cross the line that separates legality from the world of crime. In his case, he works on the street, in the field, it is relatively easy for them to try to corrupt him.
Pablo (name different from the real one of this source to preserve confidentiality) was once tempted at a motorcycle dealership. When he asked the cost of a modest moped, priced on the low side, the clerk told him:
- Hey, and you don't like the Yamaha T-MAX?
- I'm not going to like it! Of course, pisha! But I want something that will help me go to work, come home and little else. I already have a car, you have to pay for insurance, the costs of the children... I can't afford the T-MAX [about 12,000 euros].
- Well, but there are many ways to pay it. You take it, in confidence.
The scene occurred in March 2018. That clerk gave him to understand that someone would pay for the motorcycle for him. Someone with a lot of black money. Pablo twisted his nose. He felt uncomfortable.
José Antonio Cortés, a former Second Division B soccer player, is accused of leading a clan of drug traffickersMarcos Moreno
Before leaving, the vendor told him just as he saw another member of the Civil Guard stationed at the post in San Roque, a neighboring town of La Línea, arrive: "Look, this colleague of yours has taken a T-MAX."
The partner was Juan P., who was soon arrested. He spent a few months in prison until he got bail. He is already on the street, but he is still prosecuted.
Juan P. is accused of collaborating as a snitch with the Merino clan, whose leader, José Antonio Cortés Merino, is a former La Liga player who came to play for different teams in the Spanish Second Division. After hanging up his boots he switched to international hashish trafficking.
“I always follow the advice my mother gave me: 'Take as far as your hand reaches.' It didn't happen from there," says Pablo. “It would be easy for someone like me, from La Línea and within the Civil Guard, to make things easier for these people. But no. I prefer to sleep with a clear conscience. The pigs are our enemies.”
As in his case, they begin with mundane details. A colleague of Pablo was paid for the tracksuit and sports equipment for his son's soccer team. When he found out who had made the payment, the boy's father returned it to the club.
But Juan P. is not the only agent who has allowed himself to be corrupted in recent years by drug traffickers in Andalusia. Since the summer of 2018, after a few crazy years in the business, there have been 27 arrests in the Civil Guard, according to the count made by EL ESPAÑOL based on the latest operations carried out and the count handled by tax and police sources.
In the last five years, a Customs agent has also been killed in the port of Algeciras, a couple of national police officers on the payroll of the 'los Castañas' clan and the occasional local police officer from neighboring towns of La Línea and Algeciras.
Hashish is behind the majority of arrests, but also the tobacco that is smuggled from Gibraltar and the cocaine that arrives in Europe from Latin America hidden in containers on board large ships.
The brothers Francisco and Antonio Tejón, from La Línea de la Concepción (Cádiz), are the leaders of the 'los Castañas' clan.EE
Neither the National Police nor the Civil Guard offers an exact number of legal proceedings opened against members of both bodies for their alleged relationship with drug trafficking. On the other hand, official sources do emphasize "that they are a minority and that [the detainees] are black sheep that tarnish the daily work of thousands of agents." After Miguel Ángel H. was recorded last year in Algeciras (Cádiz) receiving a package from the drug trafficker who fled to Morocco, Abdellah el Haj, known as the Messi of hashish. Days later, when he was arrested, he had 60,000 euros in cash inside his car. The meeting with the Moroccan narco was at the Sisha Beach in Algeciras, a place frequented by traffickers on the Algeciras beach of Getares.
Miguel Ángel H. had arrived from Granada, where he was on leave after passing through the Algeciras command and being part of the Organized Crime and Anti-Drug Team (EDOA), in which he was a source manipulator.
In Granada, where he caught him the day of his arrest in 2019, he set up "14 or 15 pastry shops", sources from the investigation say, in addition to a supermarket that he also had in Campo de Gibraltar. It is thought that he did it with money from his links with the drug trafficker.
Miguel Ángel H was not only connected with Messi. He also with the two brothers who lead the Castañas clan. "The friendship [between drug trafficker Antonio Tejón and the civil guard] reached such a magnitude," that the first corporal "became corrupt and began to provide information" to the aforementioned criminal organization. "All this, in exchange for financial remuneration," says the judge who endorsed his arrest.
The Anti-Drug Prosecutor's Office maintains that this corporal was the one who in 2014, when he left Algeciras, put a colleague from EDOA, Trinidad SP, in contact with Antonio Tejón, leader of the Castañas and considered the largest hashish trafficker in Europe. The police authorities calculate that there were a few years, between 2014 and 2018, that the youngest of the Tejón brothers, together with his brother Francisco, controlled 70% of the chocolate that arrived in boats to the Peninsula from Morocco.
Miguel Ángel H. organized a meeting for Trinidad to meet Antonio Tejón. At that meeting an agreement would have been closed so that the drug trafficker could launder part of his fortune, estimated at around 30 million euros, through the car business of María Teresa AA, Trini's partner, as he is known in the body.
The Coordination Agency against Drug Trafficking (OCON Sur), which carried out the investigation, exposed to the Prosecutor's Office that Antonio Tejón could have laundered around 2.23 million euros through Talleres Goyma, a company that in five years (2014-19), and starting from an economic situation close to bankruptcy, it entered more than 11 million.
Talleres Goyma, a company in which money from drug trafficking would have been laundered.EE
At that meeting, it was agreed that Antonio Tejón's partner at the time and mother of several of his children, Zaraida L., would start working at Talleres Goyma "with the sole purpose of contributing" to the Social Security General Treasury.
"He did not carry out any type of activity" there, says the car to which this newspaper has had access. In total, Zaraida L. appeared as an employee of the aforementioned company for five months, although discontinuously over time.
In exchange, Antonio Tejón would have received privileged information about the EDOA investigations. Since then, and until 2019, that group "did not complete any drug trafficking operation against the organization" of 'los Castañas'.
Another agent who could come out badly from here in a short time, according to what can be deduced from an order of the judge of the Court of Instruction number 4 of Algeciras, is Pablo LCS, today a captain of the Civil Guard stationed outside Algeciras, a former lieutenant of the EDOA in the city of Cadiz and at that time head of Trinidad SP
Based on several telephone interventions carried out by the investigators, he maintained a "close friendship" with Maite AA -the couple from Trinidad-. In one of those punctures, Maite AA, the owner of Goyma, manages to recognize the former boss of her girlfriend who she knows has been investigating both of them for a year. She also tells him that they had a meeting with Corporal Miguel Ángel F. to hire Zaraida L., the wife of drug trafficker Antonio Tejón.
Trinidad SP and Miguel Ángel H. worked under the command of the captain of the Judicial Police of Algeciras, Joaquín Franco. Franco was arrested in July 2019 for his alleged relationship with the Messi of hashish. Released on bail for a few months, he continues to be charged with revealing secrets and belonging to an organized gang.
Franco, now separated from his job, had spent half his life in the Civil Guard. In 2009 he was decorated by the Cádiz Government Subdelegation, which recognized him for his fight against drug trafficking in the Strait of Gibraltar. But few were surprised by his arrest. expensive cars. ostentatious house And 27,000 euros in cash at her house the day they searched her in her presence.
Abdellah el Haj Sadek, alias 'the Messi of hashish', is on the run in Morocco.EE
Based on the investigators' reports, Franco led Abdellah El Haj, the Messi of hashish, to surrender in November 2017 after spending time on the run in Morocco. The agreement, to which the chief prosecutor of Algeciras, Juan Cisneros, gave the go-ahead, consisted of the drug trafficker paying 80,000 euros to return to Spain and be released pending trial, and another 25,000 more for each of the four members of his organization who were also wanted.
And so it was done. The Moroccan trafficker based in Algeciras since his adolescence returned to Spain to surrender. Within hours he was released. But in March 2019 Messi decided to run away again. According to him, he said in a letter that he sent to several media outlets, he was motivated by the police pressure that he suffered. The sources consulted explain that he "had returned to the fray."
Captain Franco was the one who sent messages on Whatsapp with the trafficker during his first escape. He is accused of having collected money through drug lawyers after reaching that agreement.
Agents of the law corrupted by the narco “there are porrones throughout Spain” and not only on the Andalusian coast, warns a criminologist and member of the Benemérita, who is also a member of the delegation in Malaga of the Unified Association of the Civil Guard (AUGC).
This agent, who requests anonymity, clarifies that the total number of elements of the Armed Institute is high enough, about 84,000, so that there is a striking volume of cases, no matter how small the percentage of corrupt is: "We are so many, that by force it has to have black chickpeas”, points out the criminologist.
As the first interested in eliminating those few "black sheep" that undermine confidence in the State security forces and tarnish their image should be their honest colleagues (the vast majority), the AUGG union has marked itself as one of its main objectives. denounce these practices. For this reason, adds this source, they have appeared as a popular accusation in several important judicial processes against commanders investigated for drug trafficking.
One of them is that of Colonel Francisco García Santaella, who, according to the Prosecutor's Office and the group of guards, as head of the anti-drug operations of the Granada Command, participated in the introduction of three caches with almost 8 tons of hashish between 2005 and 2006 in exchange for 360,000 euros.
Colonel Francisco García Santaella.EE
He was prosecuted almost ten years later, in 2015. The Court of Granada considered these facts to be proven, but in his sentence he acquitted García Santaella, considering that the crime had prescribed after five years for not being a "super-aggravated" crime based on the tons.
The judges established that the almost 4 tons of poor quality hashish from the only consignment seized from the three, which those involved purposely offered as bait so that the complicit commander could allegedly pretend that they were acting against the traffickers and claim added merit, should not included in the total computation, since it was not intended for the market.
The Prosecutor's Office, whose opinion is seconded by the AUGC, maintains the opposite, and last December appealed the colonel's acquittal to the Supreme Court with the argument that the statute of limitations should be ten years and not five because it is a "super aggravated" crime. ”, not only because of the weight of the caches (the drug used as bait must be included in the sum, he says) but also, and above all, because of the seriousness of the situation: the anti-drug chief of Granada, alias Padre, had left purchase.
"There have always been guards" who "have gone from the green chip to the black one," says the criminologist and member of the AUGC, alluding graphically to the colors of the uniform and the dark side of the millionaire illegal business of selling drugs. He recounts an example that touched him closely at the beginning, and not in the Strait of Gibraltar, but in the capital, Madrid, which is the great consumer center of Spain due to its demographic weight. “In 1984, my boss, a sergeant, was arrested for trafficking medium amounts of heroin.”
Civil Guard sergeant Manuel Mielgo Lera was arrested by agents of the Central Anti-Drug Group of the same institute, on August 29, 1984, in San Lorenzo de El Escorial (Madrid), according to the Efe news agency at the time. They found in his possession 1.9 kilos of heroin valued at 36 million pesetas, which today would be equivalent, including inflation, to 675,000 euros.
Much more important, in the 1990s, this expert guard from Malaga continues to recall, the UCIFA case, investigated by Judge Baltasar Garzón within the central anti-drug unit of the Civil Guard in Madrid.
In 1997, the National Court sentenced six officers and agents to between one and nine years in prison, including the head of the unit, Colonel Francisco Quintero Sanjuán, for paying his confidants with seized drugs and causing shipments from South America with the sole in order to seize the merchandise and "thus obtain illusory merits", according to the Court.
The criminologist and civil guard clarifies that the law allows to pay confidants with money from the reserved funds of the Ministry of the Interior, but not with drugs. And it underlines that the only or the only guard or police officer who can legally negotiate a stash is the one who acts under the Law of Criminal Procedure "as an infiltrated agent, with court supervision," to investigate criminal organizations from within and intervene. in “controlled deliveries” of drugs.
Why does a State official with a modest salary but guaranteed for life, a socially recognized job and a work environment with a strong code of honor agree to corrupt himself? “More than anything it is greed and it is vanity,” another criminologist, a civil guard of the Judicial Police for decades and now retired, tells EL ESPAÑOL, who also prefers to remain anonymous.
This researcher thus denies that economic hardship, a personal "bad streak", are the main trigger to fall, out of desperation, into the temptation of accepting a bribe and much more. Although he points out the equation that “the better paid a police officer is, the less corruption there is”, he warns that in the Spanish context the determining factor is the desire for wealth and power.
“Claiming economic desperation makes no sense. With the recent salary increase, the floor is around 2,000 euros, it is worthy. The one who becomes corrupt risks losing that and entering prison. For this reason, the one who is in the narco is because he is ambitious, greedy. The other reason is that someone is in a place where many colleagues are involved; no matter how honest you are, they test you and you fall.”
A Civil Guard agent counts the number of gasoline drums seized in a ship in Lebrija (Seville). Marcos Moreno
In other words, the corrupt agent can go to the other side out of sheer ambition for money and power, or because of the negative pressure of an already degraded group, which, out of fear, he actively joins, or at least does not denounce. This criminologist and former agent gives personal examples that illustrate each of these motivations.
"Normally this has happened where there are ports and airports" with a large volume of merchandise transfer, "like at Malaga airport, where I don't know how many guards were paid by the wing" until they were arrested.
He remembers that in the early 1980s he attended the complete dismantling of the group of guards that guarded the port of Seville. Many were involved in the systematic collection of bribes for allowing tobacco smuggling.
"Some were sold for nothing, for two cartons of tobacco, for letting a truck through, and others had three cars." Given the difficulty of distinguishing between the guilty and the innocent and proving it, “Lieutenant Colonel Rufino Mohedas Gómez, sent from Madrid to clean the dock, as he did not trust anyone, chose to dismantle everything, changing the assignment of all the guards. They tried and condemned some and cleaned up the dock, but they paid just for sinners.
However, this veteran retired guard and specialist in criminology sends a reassuring message to public opinion: “The rate of police corruption is very low in Spain compared to other countries. There is a lot of social control. As soon as a corrupt person comes to light, the colleague sees him, sees that he has a flat on the beach, a great car... Internal Affairs acts ”.
He points out that the Judicial Police is a destination in which there are circumstances that can indirectly favor corruption, because "they are in a special service, they have freedom of movement, there is less command control, since it is understood that they are investigating."
This is what happened to a Civil Guard sergeant who was the head of the Judicial Police in a Sevillian town near Sanlúcar de Barrameda (Cádiz), on the Bajo Guadalquivir hashish river route. This sergeant was arrested accused of becoming a drug trafficker like those with whom he was seen “having drinks”, supposedly because they were his confidants.
"Before, a corrupt agent could claim that he was dealing with his confidants, but not anymore: today, the confidants have to be in a registry, they are called 'sources' and their superiors know it," says the retired guard . The sergeant, stopped by a boat with many kilos of hashish, “lived beyond his means and was a pirate, but also smart; He never confronted his colleagues and subordinates, so as not to raise the hare ”and avoid being suspected of him.
Another Civil Guard sergeant, Francisco Javier Cáceres Borrero, commander of the post in the neighboring municipality of Isla Mayor (Seville), was sentenced to 14 years in prison for facilitating the entry of hashish from Morocco together with three subordinates in exchange for money. in a sentence that the Supreme Court ratified last February.
The protagonist of the most recent operation with uniformed officers accused of drug trafficking is the highest-ranking, the lieutenant chief of the Citizen Security Unit of the Seville Command (Usecic), arrested in August at his barracks in the Montequinto neighborhood by members of Interns from Madrid.
They took him to the capital to put him at the disposal of the National High Court, which ordered his imprisonment as allegedly responsible for crimes related to drug trafficking.
The arrest of Mariano P. last year was also surprising. He was arrested shortly before Trinidad S., the civil guard who allegedly helped Antonio Tejón launder part of his fortune. Internal Affairs confirmed that agent Mariano P., Trini's partner in Algeciras, took advantage of his position in SIVE – the camera system that monitors the Andalusian coast – to help drug trafficker Kiko El Fuerte. Mariano's was yet another name to add to the already extensive list of police officers who have gone over to drug dealing in recent times.