Not even in the middle of the Covid pandemic did drug traffickers leave the business on hold. Quite the opposite. The transportation of cocaine stashes intensified during confinement and the Police were able to verify the maneuverability of the Galician boatmen to supply a demand that was also unleashed on those dates, although the cargo losses for the organizations were considerable. Thus, five months after the capture of the first narco-submarine in the Vigo estuary with 3,000 kilos of cocaine, Customs seized the freighter MV Karar with almost 4,000 and 14 crew members, while two other shipments were on the way, supposedly sent to the same distributor in two ships that transported hundreds of head of cattle. The trial against the 29 defendants has been suspended for the second time this Wednesday in the Pontevedra Court, a delay that forces the court to release the sailors of the ship's crew who were in prison when the preventive detention terms were exceeded. One more setback in this process that already began with the release of those considered to be the main people involved in the unloading of the drugs in Galicia due to a lack of motivation in the prison orders of the investigating judge of the case.
At the head of this group of boatmen, the Prosecutor's Office places Juan Carlos Santorum, 43 years old. He was directing the departure of at least four gliders to unload the Karar's cargo about a thousand kilometers from the coast when he was alerted that the ship had been captured on the high seas and thus was able to avoid the police raid in which the entire group fell. of the. Among those detained was an official from the Customs Surveillance Service based in Vilagarcía and his wife.
Santorum escaped, but turned himself in months later in court in a staging that he had previously prepared to defend himself against the charges and serve a pending two-year prison sentence for selling confidential information to important traffickers who were being investigated, facts that went back to his beginnings in the drug business. The head of the boatmen ended up involved in this corruption case along with his confidants, two civil guards from the Pontevedra Command whose information Santorum sold to well-known bosses for whom he worked as a correspondent at that time.
The “double agents” of the Organized Crime Team (ECO) were discovered after an internal investigation, after at least four police operations went awry due to the information they passed to Santorum. A photograph put the ECO on alert. It featured one of the investigated traffickers who was handed over by corrupt guards to Santorum. From that moment on, those investigated increased security measures and the case ended up being archived.
While the guards involved were serving their sentence and were separated from the force, Juan Carlos Santorum was on the run and after surrendering he entered prison. A stay that lasted barely a year, since the main defendants in the Karar trial were free when he was released from prison awaiting trial. Now he faces another sentence of 18 and a half years in prison and a fine of 438 million euros, the value of the drug, while for the rest of the group, the prosecutor requests sentences of 13 and a half years in prison and two fines of 400 millions of euros.
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Second postponement of the trial
This is the second postponement of the Karar trial, which should have already begun in February. The hearing was suspended in its first attempt due to changes in lawyers and now it is the defense of Santorum and his brother that has requested another postponement until April, citing health reasons. This delay forces the court of the fifth section of Vigo to release the 14 sailors from the mother ship (one of them Galician and the rest from Nepal and Bangladesh), since on March 25 the four years of preventive detention will be completed.
The Prosecutor's Office accuses the 16 detainees on land of preparing and coordinating the transport of drugs, including an official from the Customs Surveillance Service and his wife, a worker at the Xunta's public nursery school network. The Prosecutor's Office charges both of them with crimes of drug trafficking and money laundering. In addition to providing information on surveillance and police activities to the organization, the couple was also responsible for the distribution of drugs, obtaining an illicit benefit that they tried to hide through various financial formulas.
Between 2015 and 2020, the couple made cash deposits into their bank accounts amounting to more than 176,000 euros. They acquired a chalet and a farm in Vilagarcía, they bought a motorcycle and a high-end car and other rural properties. They even got two Christmas lottery tickets worth 20,000 euros each. In total, the Prosecutor's Office estimates that they laundered almost half a million euros in those years and requests a prison sentence for laundering, so both face a sentence of 19 and a half years in prison.
According to the indictment, Juan Carlos Santorum directed a solid structure to have vessels prepared for drug stash operations on the high seas, and at the same time he also coordinated contacts to have vessels in different locations in which to adapt, equip and protect those 14 meter long boats.
Since 2019, researchers have known the group's movements and contacts to carry out this transportation, for which they had the collaboration of several people on the ground. Thus, the organization involved a businessman dedicated to the sale and repair of boats, boat pilots and other defendants who also managed how the drugs would later be distributed from storage points in the Arousa estuary such as Sanxenxo, O Grove or Vilagarcía.
A police uniform for the chief
Between February and March 2020, the members of the organization carried out numerous meetings, adaptation work on the vessels and other actions aimed at chartering the cocaine stash transported from Venezuela by the 60-meter-long ship MV Karar. “Starting in April, the work accelerated, and this despite the state of alarm measures due to the Covid pandemic, because the cargo ship was already making its journey across the Atlantic Ocean,” says the prosecutor.
On April 25, the ship was boarded at sea and its crew members detained without giving Santorum's boatmen time to remove the cocaine. Hours later the arrests took place on land, although the ringleader, according to the Prosecutor's Office, “had information that allowed him to anticipate the boarding and flee before being arrested.”
In the searches of the homes of the detainees, and in the six warehouses that the organization had, Greco Police officers seized cash, numerous telephones and SIM cards, satellite communication systems, cartography, notes with coordinates , cameras, inhibitor devices, vehicles and up to five vessels.
But perhaps the most unusual thing for the agents was the search at Santorum's house, in the town of Vilanova de Arousa, when he had already fled three weeks before. Among the items seized were a regulatory bulletproof vest and a flash launcher; a very powerful type of flashlight used by State security forces. Then various items of clothing appeared until an official uniform of the National Police was completed. A finding that the prosecutor deduced was useful in “usurping the identity of a police officer.”
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