Home Affairs investigates police chief who hid €20m and mastermind money laundering for drug traffickers

End of the double life of Commissioner Óscar, arrested with his partner for having accumulated more than 20 million euros thanks to cocaine trafficking. The break-in by his colleagues at the home he shared with his partner, another national police officer also detained, puts an end to his alleged collaboration with a drug trafficking organization which has lasted for years and which the Interior Police and The Anti-Terrorism Delinquency and Organized Crime Unit (Udyco) still needs to be completely rebuilt.

The sum obtained by the chief inspector represents a record level of corruption within the state security forces and bodies. Never has a police officer earned so much money by misusing the use of his uniform and badge. Perplexity spread within the National Police, where, depending on who you asked, Chief Inspector Óscar was seen as somewhat confrontational, or simply a reclusive type, reluctant to share his free time with his colleagues.

The detainee was the head of the Unit for Combating Economic and Fiscal Crime (UDEF) of the Madrid Region Police. The specialty of the UDEF became famous, after its creation at the beginning of the mandate of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, for the major cases of corruption that occurred years later: Malaya, Gürtel… and that “what is the UDEF?” which Jordi Pujol spoke about in an interview. Among its agents are many economics graduates. The police are far from monitoring and dealing with informants who delve for days into bank documents, property titles and any other clues offering money to track traffickers or corrupt authorities.

In this case, and according to what investigators believe, Óscar had put his knowledge at the service of a drug trafficking organization, criminals who accumulate their profits and who know that, almost more important than the introduction of drugs, is to be able to hide. their profits or make them benefit from legal companies.

But the chief inspector is not the only one to be attributed to the gang’s money laundering architecture. Investigative sources consulted by elDiario.es assure that the command covered the containers that drug traffickers used to introduce drugs into Spain.

Precisely, the Ministry of the Interior reported on Wednesday this week the largest seizure of cocaine to date: 13 tons ready to be introduced through the port of Algeciras. Amid the devastation caused by DANA, the drug seizure had a minor echo in the media, but it triggered the operation against Óscar and his partner, whom investigators also linked to the dismantled organization. She was assigned to the Family and Assistance to Minors Unit (UFAM) at the Alcalá de Henares police station, in Madrid. It is the police who deal with cases of gender-based violence or violence against children.

On Wednesday, in Algeciras, the deputy director of customs surveillance operations, Manuel Montesinos, assured the media that the seizure of 13,062 kilos of cocaine was not “the result of chance.” In collaboration with the Udyco police, customs surveillance had investigated a banana importing company located in the province of Alicante for four years. The bananas arrived, but the company had no profits or infrastructure.

Police and customs officers carried out more than 200 secret inspections of the company’s containers. Suspicions rose to another level when the Alicante company stopped working with banana exporters from other Latin American countries and focused on buying from an Ecuadorian company that authorities of this Latin American country have been linked to drug trafficking.

Finally, in mid-October, the shipment was detected and the Medusa customs surveillance scanner certified that the drugs were inside. It was a container in which a first screen of banana crates was traveling, which covered the rest of the cargo, made up of crates of the same appearance and size loaded with 11,000 cocaine pills, or 13 tons in total .

Narcos, economists, police and prosecutors

These are two different operations that converge. The seizure of the drugs was ordered by the Algeciras court while the investigations which led to the arrest of the main inspector, his associate and 13 other people continue before the National Court. This Friday, the president of the Central Investigation Court number 1, Francisco de Jorge, sent the 15 detainees to temporary prison. In addition to suspected drug traffickers, those arrested include economists and tax experts. The cause is being kept secret.

The investigation into Chief Inspector Óscar began in January 2024, but Udyco and Internal Affairs did not have the evidence until June, the month in which the drug prosecution presented the complaint that brought the case before the National Court. The police had detected a bank transfer between a drug trafficking company and another that they associated with Óscar and his partner. Behind all this there was apparent commercial activity, but something was wrong. The discovery of more than 20 million euros in the walls of the police house testifies to several years of collaboration with drug traffickers.