The court considers it irregular that the first communications between an officer and a drug trafficking ringleader seeking to import cocaine have disappeared.

The cocaine packages seized in the container that arrived in Vigo in January.

Cerrada 08 July 2025

Last week, Investigative Court No. 4 of Vigo ordered the provisional release of eight alleged drug traffickers who had been imprisoned since January in connection with a 1,100-kilogram cocaine shipment. The court found strong indications that the anti-drug operation—involving up to seven undercover agents—may have been a crime provoked by the National Police, as argued by the Alicante law firm of Francisco Miguel Galiana Botella, defense attorney for four of the defendants in the case.

The destruction of initial communications between one of the ringleaders of the organization, known as “El Cid”, who sought to smuggle cocaine into Spain, and a police officer who at the time was not yet acting as an undercover agent, raised serious doubts as to whether this was a case of police entrapment.

One of the four defendants represented by attorney Francisco Galiana had already been released shortly after being imprisoned, after the defense claimed they had no access to key elements of the case due to it being under a secrecy order. The other three were released last Friday under precautionary measures: they are forbidden from leaving Galicia, from traveling abroad, and must appear weekly before the court.

The investigating judge accepted the defense’s claims and, although he did not rule on the validity or exclusion of the evidence obtained, he did identify “serious legal irregularities” in the early stages of the investigation. That investigation led to the seizure of 1,100 kilos of cocaine (1,200 kilos in raw form) hidden in a container that arrived in the port of Vigo from Ecuador in early January.

The dismantled trafficking network was composed of Belgian and Albanian nationals, several of whom were linked to the Alicante province, specifically the towns of Torrevieja, Benidorm, and La Nucía.

In the release orders, Judge Juan Carlos Carballal stated that undercover operations cannot serve as an excuse or justification to induce criminal behavior in individuals who are not predisposed to commit crimes. The origin and circumstances of the contacts between a Special Operations Service officer and the trafficker “El Cid”—currently imprisoned in Belgium—”present significant gaps that prevent, at this procedural stage, a confident endorsement of their legal validity.”

The judge noted that there is no objective documentary record of the content of the initial communications, as investigators claimed they had been lost or not preserved due to technical reasons involving the messaging app Signal and possible automatic deletion—an assertion denied by attorney Francisco Galiana in his arguments.

This disappearance, according to the judge, is “incompatible”, as the defense argued that there are the requirements of the Spanish Code of Criminal Procedure, which “obliges judicial police officers to meticulously document all actions they undertake, ensuring their proper inclusion in the case file.”

The judge further noted that the Central Cybercrime Unit, in a report requested by Francisco Miguel Galiana’s law office, contradicted the investigators’ actions by stating that resetting mobile devices “would never be carried out under any circumstances without explicit judicial authorization.”

Since the content of the initial messages has not been preserved, it is impossible to determine with certainty how the contact occurred or who initiated it, the court order states. Nor is it clear whether the officer acted passively or instead “engaged in behavior of recruitment, inducement, or suggestion, which would be inadmissible.”

The officer testified in court that he could not recall the exact content of the messages but asserted that “it was El Cid who contacted him” and that “he made no offers.” According to the judge, this response is insufficient and incompatible “with the enhanced diligence standards required for undercover investigative techniques.”

The judge concluded that the failure of this officer and his unit to take “measures to safeguard this information demonstrates either serious operational negligence or deliberate concealment,” and that the initial contact appears “consistent with a police operation lacking effective judicial oversight and showing credible signs of being irregular”.

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