Freedom for the only person arrested in connection with Spain’s largest cocaine haul

Police continue searching for the couple from the El Campello company who imported the container of bananas with 13 tons of drugs.

Closed 28 OCT 2024 18:29 Updated 28 OCT 2024 18:47

The only person arrested in connection with the largest cocaine shipment seized to date in Spain—13 tons of drugs in a container of bananas imported by a company in El Campello—has been released on bail since last weekend.

The suspect was released on bail by a court and is the sister of the administrator of Abadix Fruits, a company in El Campello that allegedly organized the shipment of the cocaine from Ecuador.

The arrested woman holds a two percent stake in the El Campello-based company, which imports and exports fruit. The court has confiscated her passport, prohibited her from leaving the country, and ordered her to appear in court every two weeks.

The company’s administrator and her husband, a salesman for the company, remain at large. The National Police are continuing their search and have requested that the Algeciras court handling the case issue arrest warrants at both the European and international levels.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office has requested her imprisonment.

The freed woman, 56 years old and originally from Ecuador but with Spanish nationality, was arrested in a town in Toledo and appeared in court in Illescas last Saturday. The prosecution requested her imprisonment without bail as a member of a criminal organization and an accomplice in the shipment of the 13,062 kilos of cocaine seized in the port of Algeciras by the Tax Agency and the National Police. However, the defense, led by lawyers Francisco Miguel Galiana Botella and Alicia Grau Córdoba, opposed the prosecution’s request and argued that there is no evidence linking the arrested woman to the largest cocaine seizure in Spain.

A police officer with part of the five-ton cocaine shipment seized in Alicante in 2023, which was also hidden in bananas. / INFORMATION

The duty judge in Illescas has ruled that there is insufficient evidence to order the imprisonment of the woman arrested in connection with the drug shipment. She holds only a 2% stake in the El Campello-based company managed by her sister, and the company’s accountant testified to the police without mentioning the arrested woman. Her professional relationship with the couple who fled after the drug seizure was explained by the accountant. In her statement, the woman denied any involvement in the events under investigation and claimed she didn’t even recall her small stake in her sister’s company, which was founded in 2018.

See original article