Twelve million euros in wads of banknotes hidden in false ceilings and another eight million euros behind plaster screens. In total, agents from the Home Office of the National Police found 20 million euros between the walls of the home of chief inspector Óscar Sánchez Gil, who is none other than one of the heads of the economic and fiscal crimes unit of the City Council of Madrid. Judicial Police, specialized in the fight against money laundering. On November 6, the search at the home of this 48-year-old man, father of three, in Villalbilla, a town located 35 kilometers east of Madrid, lasted more than twelve hours. One million euros was also discovered in his office, at his police station, in Madrid.
At the end of his police detention, the National Court, the highest court competent in cases of organized crime, imposed preventive detention on Mr. Sánchez Gil, accused of “ drug trafficking, money laundering, membership in a criminal organization, corruption and disclosure of official secrets “. Never has a case of corruption within the national police reached such magnitude. “He was a person with an austere appearance, all his colleagues are in shock”explains a police source to World.
In total, the police made fifteen arrests, including Sánchez Gil’s partner, also a police officer, as well as his sister-in-law, who had created a VTC licensing company in 2018, suspected of having been used to launder money. Commissions paid to police officers by drug traffickers in exchange for information about ongoing police operations. Another part of the funds would have been laundered through the purchase of cryptocurrencies.
“A serious corruption problem”
Before being appointed to the Economic and Fiscal Crimes Unit approximately four years ago, Mr. Sánchez Gil had worked for five years in the Drugs and Organized Crime Unit. His contacts with drug traffickers could date back to this time. More than a year has passed, according to the newspaper The Worldthat the police were investigating this man. However, his arrest was accelerated after the record seizure, on October 14, in the Andalusian port of Algeciras, of a shipment of 13 tons of cocaine hidden in containers of bananas from Guayaquil, Ecuador. Destined for a fruit importing company in Alicante, in the southeast of Spain, this shipment of cocaine is the largest ever seized in Spain and the second in Europe. According to police sources, the drugs were destined for a cartel in the Balkans. The owners of this ghost company, a couple, fled, no doubt after being warned of the police raid.
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