The National Police inspector who investigated the report on “Operation Mito”, relating to the alleged attempt to introduce four tons of cocaine into Spain by the historic drug trafficker Sito Miñanco, assured this Monday before the Court that lawyer Gonzalo Boye “directed” the plan to try to recover nearly 900,000 euros confiscated from the organization.
Boye, defender of former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, sits on the dock with 47 other people – including Sito Miñanco himself – in a trial which began despite the request for suspension of several defenses.
The president of the Third Criminal Section, Alfonso Guevara, a veteran of these conflicts, avoided the absence of an accused imprisoned in Dakar (Senegal), another who did not appear (whose search and arrest he ordered). arrest) and a third who was at the medical examiner’s office.
Video | Puigdemont’s lawyer, alongside Sito Miñanco, in money laundering case
Guevara accepted the arguments of drug prosecutors Ángel Bodoque and Cristina López Amat that the absence of these defendants does not affect the prosecution of the others and, after listening to brief presentations of the previous questions, which will be resolved in one sentence, he gave way to the practice of tests. The accused will testify at the end.
The instructor of procedures carried out by the police between 2016 and 2018 was the first to respond to the public accusation.
He recalled that the investigation began when they found that José Ramón Prado Bugallo, better known as Sito Miñanco, was taking advantage of the fact that he was in an open regime in the Algeciras penitentiary center (Cádiz) – where he was serving another sentence for drug trafficking. trafficking – to “resume criminal activity”.
“Sito Miñanco is a businessman specializing in drug trafficking and There has never been an organization as powerful as yours in Spain“, the agent said. “They had experts in everything, even telecommunications, a shipyard where they made their own boats. And lawyers,” he said.
Supported by Junts
One of them, Gonzalo Boye, listened to him sitting in the fifth row of the main bench, although, because of his status as a lawyer, he could have been on the bench. “I don’t want privileges, I just want justice” declared.
Boye reiterated that “I am here accused of doing my job as a lawyer”.
The twenty leaders of Junts per Catalunya who supported him from the moment he arrived at the headquarters of the National Court – including Jordi Turull, former president Quim Torra and the spokespeople of the Congress and the Senate, Miriam Nogueras and Eduard Pujol – declared the following: is “a montage with clear political motivations” and that Boye would not be sitting if he were not Puigdemont’s lawyer.
The police commander responsible for “Operation Myth” described it very differently. He explained that on February 6, 2017 (i.e. before the events of the “process” in the autumn of that year), customs officers seized 889,620 euros at Madrid Barajas Airport . and they arrested several people that the police linked to the Sito Miñanco organization, among them Manuel Pedro González Rubio, a former client of Boye.
“This money belongs to José Ramón,” said the inspector, contradicting Boye’s defensive thesis that the funds belonged to González Rubio and that he was taking them to Colombia for a legitimate business transaction.
“The money is given to him by Enrique García Arango [considerado mano derecha de Sito Miñanco] to Manuel Puentes Saavedra, who is a Colombian who, in turn, coordinates the rest of the Colombians in the organization, alongside Nelson Pascuas. Saavedra and Nelson take these people to the airport, while they wait for them to check the suitcases. In the minutes [de la aprehensión] It appears that the money belongs to González Rubio. “It’s a lie, it’s very clear in the conversations we intercepted and in the surveillance.”
“I don’t know if they lost their cool a little or if they were more gullible,” added the inspector. “One of these events got people talking and they started to get very obvious conversations that show that this money belongs to José Ramón“.
The “most reliable” people in Sito Miñanco “started saying that they had to get the money back and for that they hired some lawyers.” One of them is Boye.
“False” documents
“The lawyers do not help them from a legal professional point of view but falsify documents to recover money from drug trafficking,” of which they are fully aware” the policeman said.
In one of the intercepted conversations, one of the Colombians detained at the airport with the money, Puentes Saavedra’s ex-partner, told González Rubio that “the way they were trying to get the money back wasn’t enough.” was not possible because they used promissory notes.” which had already “been used to recover other funds that had already been seized for drug trafficking in other proceedings”.
“It was clear,” the police officer stressed, “that what they were doing was not in accordance with the law, they were falsifying documents to be able to recover money from drug trafficking. It did not come from a company or another company.”
-Do you remember if anyone gave specific instructions on what to do to recover the money requested by the prosecutor?
– The person they contacted and talked about and who indicated how to justify the money problem Along with the promissory notes they had already used in another case was Boye, the inspector assured.
The officer is expected to continue testifying on Tuesday. The trial could last until the end of next January.
