The Supreme Court rejected the appeal presented by Civil Guard Colonel Francisco García Santaella against the seven-year prison sentence for drug trafficking and corruption crimes imposed on him by the Provincial Court of Granada. García Santaella was appointed to the general management of the armed institute when elDiario.es revealed in April 2015 that the colonel was the subject of a secret investigation by a court in Granada, which led to his immediate dismissal .
In January 2022, the Granada Provincial Court sentenced Civil Guard Colonel Francisco García Santaella to seven years and two months in prison for drug trafficking and corruption crimes. The same judges had acquitted the high command of the Civil Guard, but the Supreme Court forced them to write a new judgment, considering that the first instance judgment had caused “a certain embarrassment”. Once the case was sent back to Granada and the provincial court convicted him, the Civil Guard appealed again to the Supreme Court, which now confirms the sentence of more than seven years in prison.
The sentence amounts to 7 years in prison. There are five years for an offense against public health involving a substance that does not seriously harm health, and a fine of six million euros, and another two years and three months for an offense of corruption, as well as an additional fine of 120,000 euros. The Provincial Court of Granada must now order the entry into prison of García Santaella, to which the parties can personally present their allegations. With a prison sentence of more than five years, only if the convict suffers from a serious illness, he can be released from prison.
The conviction concerns collaboration in the introduction of drugs into the illicit market with other people who landed them on the beaches of the coast of Grenada as controlled deliveries. Furthermore, as compensation for his collaboration in creating the aforementioned caches, described in the third and fifth sections of the list of proven facts of the sentence, he received from one of the participants in the operations a sum of money which appears in fact. proven by this collaboration.
García Santaella was accused of allowing the introduction of a cache of hashish on the coast of Granada, while he was responsible for the anti-drug group of the Command, with the rank of commander, in exchange for 360,000 euros, during 2005 and 2006. After more than thirty years of surveillance of the internal affairs service, officers discovered evidence of the high command’s involvement in drug trafficking. When he was indicted, the colonel was stationed at the General Directorate of the Civil Guard and had an office a few meters from the director at the time, Arsenio Fernández de Mesa.
The Supreme Court considers it proven that there was an agreement and pact between the convict and two people to carry out drug entry phases along the coast, specifically of hashish in significant quantities, also declaring two drug entries proven without arrests, all to promote drug trafficking. As a result of this agreement, it was deemed proven that two drug landings had taken place. The drug was considered in extremely serious quantities
These were probably anti-drug officers from the command who, while listening to an investigation into drug trafficking, heard comments from the ‘narcos’ about a certain “Father”, with whom they had worked in the pass. When it came time to arrest the drug dealers, they discovered that “Father” was the head of the anti-drug command.
