100 in Melilla. 44 between Sanlúcar and Huelva. 29 in Barbate. 20 in Malaga … so up to 400. The report of the Anti-Drug Prosecutor’s Office in Cadiz for 2023, the latest published, includes the massive presence of drug boats as one of the main problems of drug trafficking in Andalusia. “They are proliferating all over the coast, without there being sufficient capacity to combat and stop them at any time. » The public prosecutor’s office is trying to arrest them through legal means, even though it is aware of the enormous complexity of this objective. He has already found a formula to try to attack them: increase the penalties for those who are his essential allies, the tankers, boats and vehicles responsible for supplying them with fuel.
The anti-drug prosecutor of Cadiz and delegate to Andalusia, Ana Villagómez, responsible for this task in the province of Cadiz for two decades, has shown him his concern for years regarding the “impunity” of the transport of gasoline and diesel . There are numerous operations by state security forces and agencies that manage to arrest people who transport large quantities of fuel by land and sea. “We have repeatedly requested a specific criminal classification, but until ‘Now she hasn’t arrived.’
After a long wait, the Prosecutor’s Office has determined that, even if a specific crime of transporting fuel for drug trafficking is approved or not, it is possible to toughen the penalties by assigning those responsible for these goods another criminal offense. already included in several articles of the Penal Code: the possession and transport of flammable, incendiary or asphyxiating goods, which allows sentences of four to eight years in prison and guarantees that the accused must go through preventive detention if they are arrested.
From an administrative offense to prison sentences
The prosecutor’s office shows in its report that high-speed boats are also used to transport fuel, as shown by caches of 2,000 and 3,000 liters per boat. “We are transforming an administrative offense into prison sentences, which can change things because we have confirmed that people with pending cases are again detained on boats of this type,” emphasizes Villagómez.
It now remains for judges to respond to these requests from the prosecutor’s office when the cases go to trial. And this time, between the moment when the accusations occur and the trial arrives, is another of the great concerns of memory, which once again reflects the saturation and blockage of the courts where most of the cases are located in the province from Cadiz, like La Línea or Barbate.
“One of the problems with holding trials is the same as what happens during investigation: slowness. The intermediate phase sometimes lasts years, to which must be added the defense strategy aimed at suspending the charges, which happens frequently,” warns the prosecutor. “This leads to undue delays, which results in reduced sentences.”
Last year, the Cádiz Prosecutor’s Office prepared 13 indictments. Among them, the cases dated from 2012; and two others, from 2014. Some even corresponded to previous years, which led to requests for the prescription of two causes. One in which 47 people were implicated for crimes against public health and against criminal organizations, for crimes that occurred in 2007. And another for money laundering, paralyzed since its beginnings in 2011.
Villagómez has been demanding a “total renewal of the procedural system” for many years, because the current one “is incapable of taking on a new crime, especially organized crime.” This lack of transformation has, according to the prosecutor, “disastrous consequences as researchers do not obtain convictions within a reasonable period.” A situation which, as he warns, “represents the consolidation of criminal structures which, far from seeing their capacity diminished, become stronger and penetrate the economic and social fabric of entire populations”.
Incentives for Barbate, San Roque or La Línea
Therefore, although this reform does not happen, the prosecutor’s office proposes in its report to “strengthen the most saturated courts, appoint strengthening judges and prosecutors, justice officials, who ensure that the procedures are progressing and encouraging certain places in certain municipalities to prevent the Escape of judges or prosecutors in places like Barbate, San Roque or La Línea.
The 15-page document, which summarizes an entire year of work, does not include, since it occurred in February this year, the last major tragedy linked to drug trafficking, such as the murder of two civil guards in the port of Barbate was run over by a drug boat. But it influences her previous analysis of possible causes, as if predicting that something bad might happen. He warned of the strong presence of active drug boats with obvious impunity and warned of a reduction in the tonnes seized and operations carried out. Foreign health received 91 tonnes of medicines for analysis and destruction, compared to 123 the previous year.
The prosecutor’s office believes that this could have been due to two factors: the alteration of unloading areas outside the province of Cádiz in Huelva and Malaga, and the reduction in police pressure, with the removal of the OCon Sur group in 2022. “The decrease in the decrease in We infer the pressure from the reduction in the initiation of criminal proceedings and investigations against criminal organizations and from the information on the large number of high-speed boats sighted along the coast, from Barbate to Sanlúcar, without sufficient capacity to embark and detain them.
