The administrator of the company that imported the container containing the 13 tons of drugs and her husband had been on the run for five months.

The police guarding the 13 tons of cocaine seized in a container imported by a company from El Campello. / EFE

Closed Mar 10, 2025 8:45 PM

The escape of the couple from El Campello who is in charge of the fruit company that imported the container where the National Police and the Tax Agency seized 13,062 kilos of cocaine last October has lasted approximately five months, the largest cache of this drug seized in Spain and the second in all of Europe. José Miguel B.C., 58, and his partner, Vilma Janet A.B., 51, have today put an end to their escape and have turned themselves in at a National Police station in Madrid, where they have been arrested as there are arrest warrants, both national and European, since the drugs were seized and the couple disappeared from the luxurious villa in El Campello where they lived with their minor daughter.

The couple, defended by the lawyer Francisco Miguel Galiana Botella, will be placed at the disposal of the National Court once the police proceedings are concluded. The man, a native of Almoradí, is sick and requires continuous dialysis treatment, which is why the Police have also been looking for him in hospitals. It is unknown where the couple has been hiding during these five months.

A house in El Campello where the couple who have surrendered lived. /THIN

At first, the Police arrested last October in the province of Toledo a sister of the administrator of the company Abadix Fruits de El Campello, who appears with a 2% stake in this fruit export and import company. The Prosecutor’s Office requested the imprisonment of this woman, also assisted by the lawyer Galiana Botella, and the court agreed to her provisional release.

The court of Algeciras that opened the proceedings after the discovery of the largest cache of cocaine in the country ended up inhibiting itself in favor of the central court of Instruction number 1 of the National Court, where  this couple and their company, among other people and companies, were already being investigated since the middle of last year for their relationship with an international drug trafficking organization that imported containers with cocaine.  for which inspector Óscar Sánchez Gil, former head of the UDEF in Madrid and imprisoned after being arrested along with his wife, also a national policeman, allegedly also worked.

Villa in Dénia bought by the former head of the UDEF in Madrid. / A. P. F.

This police commander hid about 20 million euros in cash between his house in Madrid and a villa he bought and renovated in Dénia, an acquisition allegedly financed with the money paid by the drug network in exchange for the protection he gave to the organization, according to the investigation carried out by Internal Affairs of the National Police.

Investigators have discovered that the former head of UDEF allegedly opened investigations where he introduced data from containers and companies linked to the drug trafficking organization in order to detect if they were the subject of other police investigations and alert those responsible for the criminal group. Precisely, from the beginning the Police suspected that the couple from El Campello may have received a tip-off and left their villa precipitously, since they were not at home when an operation was deployed to search the house and arrest the couple under investigation.