The National Court agrees to the provisional release of the administrator of the importing company and attenuated imprisonment at home for the husband due to his illnesses.

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11 MAR 2025 16:59 – Updated Mar 11, 2025 5:02 PM

The couple based in El Campello, wanted for five months for the import of a container where 13 tons of cocaine – the largest cache in Spain  – were seized – will not enter prison after turning themselves in to the National Police five months after fleeing as a result of the seizure of the drug. The couple appeared this Tuesday in the National Court, where the Prosecutor’s Office has requested their imprisonment, and after being assisted by the lawyer Francisco Miguel Galiana Botella, the magistrate has provisionally released the 51-year-old woman who appears as the administrator of Abadix Fruits, the company that imported the container of the drug,  and attenuated provisional detention, at her home in El Campello, for her husband, 58, who needs to receive continuous dialysis treatments and suffers from other pathologies.

The couple had been wanted for five months for the largest cache of cocaine, linked to an organization related to the former head of the UDEF of the Police in Madrid that hid 20 million euros and was imprisoned for collaborating with the drug trafficking network. José Miguel B.C. and Vilma Janet A.B. turned themselves in last Monday morning at a National Police station  in Madrid, where they were arrested as there were arrest warrants as owners of the container in which the largest cache of cocaine seized in Spain was seized last October in the port of Algeciras.  13,062 kilos of cocaine valued at about 800 million euros sold per gram.

The couple’s lawyer, Francisco Miguel Galiana Botella, in a file image. / AXEL ÁLVAREZ

The couple has appeared before the titular magistrate of the central court of Instruction number 1 of the National Court, in charge of the investigation in which the former head of the UDEF and his wife, also a national policeman, are implicated. The man has only testified to questions from his lawyer Francisco Miguel Galiana to explain his medical pathologies and after the appearance the woman has been provisionally released with the obligation of daily appearances, withdrawal of passport and prohibition of leaving Spain.

The Anti-Drug Prosecutor’s Office has requested preventive detention and without bail for the two detainees for crimes against public health and money laundering, although finally the judge has only agreed to it for the man and in an attenuated way. The magistrate has adopted this decision after verifying that the man, who has been examined by a forensic doctor of the National Court, suffers from an illness that forces him to undergo daily dialysis, as he has also been able to verify with the medical documentation of the General Hospital of Alicante that has been provided by the defense of the investigated.

The 13-tonne cache seized in October in the port of Algeciras was hidden in a container carrying a cargo of bananas destined for a fruit export company based in El Campello that had been receiving large quantities of fruit from Ecuador for years, making it extremely difficult to analyse and inspect its shipments.

For four years, the investigators discreetly monitored the activity of this company and discovered that it was carrying out a real commercial activity, but that it did not add up, because it had no profits or infrastructure behind it, so the investigators suspected that it could be a cover.

They detected that the company stopped working with banana exporters from other Latin American countries and focused exclusively on an exporter from Ecuador, known to the police of his country for his links to drug trafficking.

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