Madrid (EFE) seven and a half tons of cocaine” from South America, thereby obtaining “exorbitant” benefits, according to the Prosecutor’s Office.
Among the accused stands out Ana María Cameno, known as the Queen of Coca and who is serving 16 years in prison for distributing a hundred kilos of cocaine. She and her then-partner, David Vela, now face a request for almost 40 years in prison.
The Prosecutor’s Office places them as the alleged leaders of the organization along with Artemio López Tardón, for whom they are asking for 46 and a half years. His brother Álvaro, prosecuted in this case, will not sit on the bench as he is serving 150 years in prison in the United States. Both are known as “the Miami”.
The long time elapsed since the proceeding against this gang until the trial was held has led the Prosecutor’s Office to consider undue delays to reach agreements in accordance with more than half of the defendants, including Cameno, which could see the petition substantially reduced penalty initially requested for her and be sentenced to 5 years in prison.
According to the sources of the case consulted by EFE, the agreements, which will be finalized on the first day of the trial, are fundamentally for the crimes of drug trafficking or money laundering interchangeably, and in some cases for both.
Although the judge prosecuted 92 people, the prosecutor’s brief is directed against 81, as several are outside the reach of Justice, although he warns that there are those involved who have not been located.
It is a “mammoth” macro-trial that, due to lack of space, has had to house two different rooms of the National Court facilities in the town of San Fernando de Henares (Madrid), conditioned during these months for the purpose. It is the largest trial held so far by this court.
Among the accused are Spaniards, North Americans, Colombians or Indians and they will be tried for crimes against public health, money laundering, against the Treasury, falsehood, counterfeit currency or illegal possession of weapons, among others.
A highly complex network accused of introducing 7.5 tons of cocaine
“Extremely complex”, “labyrinthine”, “intricate” or “huge” are the adjectives used by the prosecutor to describe this alleged international drug trafficking network that would have operated inside and outside Spain between 2007 and 2011, although he believes that some members would have been acting since 2003.
He calculates that the López Tardón family would have obtained “a minimum of almost two dozen million euros in cash” from drug trafficking that they allegedly hid in “zulos” inside their “luxurious” home. In one of the hiding places alone, they kept 700 packages with 500-euro bills and another 21 that each had 500 100-euro bills, according to the investigation.
The judge who investigated the case estimated the money that the organization allegedly earned in 2009 at 20 million euros and 52 million in 2010.
Apart from the “very main activity of international cocaine trafficking”, the prosecutor recounts “multiple other” “criminal” conducts: the distribution of hashish or marijuana, “laundering” of “exorbitant profits”, “continuous fraud” against the Treasury or possession of weapons.
An organization divided into four branches
The “spinal cord” of the organization was made up of four sectors -each one with its respective “leaders” or “hierarchs”- and a fifth made up of defendants who later disassociated themselves and ended up acting on their own. Some of them, says the prosecutor, dedicated themselves to trafficking medicines, anabolics and “doping” products.
The first was led by the López Tardón brothers, dedicated to planning and executing drug trafficking operations: from the transfer from South America to Spain “of the voluminous shipments of cocaine” -which reached 7 and a half tons- to its sale and distribution. In our country.
Once here, the second “sector” came into play, led by the “co-gerfalcons” Ana María Cameno, alias Pollito or Llorona; and her then husband, David Vela, alias Cabezón or Machín. They, according to the prosecutor, acquired “different fractions” of the drug consignments and sent it to the final distributors in Spain, that is, to the third and fourth sectors.
The prosecutor attributes Cameno an “outstanding” role in the relationship between the “supreme chiefs of the four branches”, and believes that he deployed the infrastructure to set up a “gigantic” clandestine laboratory, located on a farm in Villanueva de Perales (Madrid). , dedicated to the manipulation and adulteration of cocaine.
According to the investigation, four Biochemistry professors from the Javeriana University of Bogotá worked there “cooking” the drug.
Like the first sector, this second group is also accused of laundering the “voluminous” benefits of the network thanks to different “front men or straw people.”
The third branch would be led by the brothers Raúl and Víctor Juárez, whose function was allegedly the distribution and sale of the drug, mainly in the Madrid neighborhood of San Blas, in an area known by code as “El Muro”, while the fourth It would be commanded by the Colombian Hispanic citizen Laurentino Sánchez.
