Drug trafficking: a bush, jewelry, art and many cars: of ostentatious whims of the narco to cash for the state | Spain

A mare with its luxury garrison – which included -, jewelry, art and many cars, from Audis to Ferraris. The ostentation with which Narcos of the Strait They season their lives contributes valuable clues of their adventures and ends up being a key proof of bleaching in the judgments. But to give those assets utility and performance beyond their seizure has been one of the headaches of the judges and prosecutors who fight against the drug trafficking of the South. To that end, the Ministry of Justice opened on March 4, 2019 in Algeciras (Cádiz) a sub -end of the Office of Assets Recovery and Management (ORGA). Since then, it has already confiscated goods and money worth 40.7 million euros, more than 30% of the total of what was intervened by the office at the state level.

The data obtained six years later in the only sub -end of this body of the State Administration that helps the judges when locating and administering the assets of the criminals, give a good track of the frantic activity with which the narco of the Strait moves. That inauguration, chaired by the then Minister Dolores Delgado, was part of the Government -promoted measures package to strengthen the fence against mafias that lived one of its golden stages. Just half a year earlier, police operations began to be lavished, each with dozens of detainees, tons of hashish or cocaine seized and houses, cars and diverse objects confiscated without other destination than staying to accumulate dust and losing value in a warehouse. The office came to solve this ballot through the advance auctions.

« It is designed for the goods that depreciate for a disuse, such as a car or a ship that loses their value saved awaiting the 10 years that can take a final sentence, » exemplifies Ana Villagómez, anti -drug prosecutor of Andalusia. She, her fellow prosecution and instructional judges are key so that the Algecireña Orga – which extends its influence in large areas of Andalusia, Ceuta and Melilla – enters the scene, since the institution can only intervene for the entrustment of them. « The fundamental difference is that the assets are managed in advance, before the judicial procedure ends and sentence is issued, » they explain from the Ministry of Justice. This means auctioning them when they have more value and thus dodge the devaluation or deterioration for the course of time. Incidentally, the State avoids deposit expenses that often end up exceeding the market value of the assets when the judicial procedure ends.

The singularity is that the auction is done long before the trial that resides whether the owner of that good is guilty or not. The money that the office gets with its auction is recorded in its current account and cannot move from there until the judicial process does not end. As of December 31, 2024, the ORGA had in that account a balance of 118.7 million euros, of which 40.7 million Only in 2023 – last year available – the office sold 11,309 goods for which it obtained a benefit of 1.6 million. In the top of the confiscated and sold are the properties (for which 481,635 euros were recovered), vehicles (up to 446,459 euros), vessels (which contributed 420,006 euros) and art and jewels (1,733 objects through which 402,880 euros entered).

Although the courts have accounts in which the recovered money can be deposited –It can be in cash, bank accounts or cryptocurrencies-, The difference from the Orga’s account is that the amount generates interests the time there, explains a judicial source. Since it was created at the national level in 2015, the Orga is also trained to locate and recover assets or assets by judicial mandate. « They have direct contact with the agencies of other asset recovery countries. They also have access to property data, bank accounts or social security, » says Villagómez, referring to a team that is also integrated by police and civil guards.

The end of money

A review of the National ORGA website gives clues of the diversity of goods and objects from criminal organizations that end up being auction objects: from agricultural machinery to solar cabins, passing through various cars, such as an audi a3 white confiscated in Malaga and whose auction ends in mid -May, a water motorcycle that was stored in the neighborhoods with an appraisal value of 7,500 euros or a lot of a Mercedes, an McLaren and a Ferrari that were deposited in Mengíbar (Jaén) Awarded for almost 400,000 euros. The traceability of which operation belongs to the goods, but there are cases in which their uniqueness gives them away. For example, those three high -end cars that belonged to the architects of a alleged fraud in the sale of hydrocarbons in 2020 from which the former president of the CD Badajoz, Joaquín Parra, supposedly participated. Along the way, there are properties, such as vehicles, boats and even horses, which end up deposited in the hands of the Police or the Civil Guard, if they are useful for their operation.

Although most of the goods that ORGA manages in Algeciras have to do with drug trafficking, it also manages goods from criminal organizations in general, investigated for crimes such as corruption or money laundering. The nature of the crime also marks the final destination of the recovered money. If they do not have to do with the narco, once the sentence is firm and condemned – if it were acquitted to the investigated, the money is returned – the funds go to the commission of adjudication of the product of the crime, discounting a part that goes to the support of the cost of the office itself. And, if they are illicit for drug trafficking, the Fund of Goods confiscated by illicit drug trafficking and other related crimes managed by the Government Delegation for the National Drug Plan of the Ministry of Health.

In these years, the ORGA has transferred to the judicial bodies almost 10.7 million euros to deal with the payment of compensation set in sentence and to end in that national plan. That is added another 14.1 million, from the rest of the crimes, which have ended in the public treasure, of which 5.2 million have ended in projects to fight against organized crime and to assist the victims. But in the zero zone of the narrow drug trafficking, the Gibraltar field, the anti -drug associations regret not receiving anything from those items, especially that related to the narco. « Nothing comes at all. There would have to be a political sensitivity to help the territory that suffers it, » complains Paco Mena, of the Light Anti -Drug Federation.

The health regulations that can only attend these aid national organizations, large municipalities or autonomous communities. Mena and theirs have spent years negotiating with the ministry to try to find « imaginative formulas » to get something to the area without having to change the law, but recognizes that they have long thrown out of the towel. Mena only has the satisfaction that the narco of the Strait has one more lock, to lose for its assets, in its unfortunate business that never seems to have an end.