Spain’s top anti-fraud cop found with €20 million after drug bust

The former police chief in charge of Spain’s economic crimes unit has been arrested after officers found €20 million ($21.2 million) stashed in the walls of his house. The arrest was linked to the country’s largest ever cocaine bust, local media reported.

Oscar Sanchez Gil was arrested last week along with 15 other people, AFP reported on Wednesday, citing Spanish media. The arrests came a month after 13 tons of cocaine were found in a container of bananas seized at Spain’s southern port of Algeciras. The haul, which originated in Ecuador, was the largest ever drug shipment seized in Spain, and the second-largest in the EU, Spain’s National Police announced earlier this month.

Officers investigating the shipment quickly discovered links between the importers and Sanchez Gil, and ordered a search of his home near Madrid. They found €20 million in cash hidden in the walls of the property, and €1 million in his office, AFP reported.

Sanchez Gil’s romantic partner, who is also a police officer, was among the 15 others arrested. The detainees have been charged with drug trafficking, bribery, money laundering, corruption and membership of a criminal organization, police sources told the news agency.

Gil had worked in the national police’s narcotics division before leading its anti-fraud and money-laundering unit. According to El Mundo, he used the former position to make contact with transnational criminal gangs, then helped them evade surveillance at Spanish ports. The money found in his house is believed to be connected to this work and not to the latest drug bust, the Spanish newspaper reported.

According to a police source, Sanchez Gil is thought to have worked with narcotics traffickers for “at least five years.”

Prior to his arrest, the high-ranking police officer had been suspected of wrongdoing by his colleagues, who tapped his phone, according to El Mundo’s sources.

The EU is a lucrative market for cocaine traffickers, and for six consecutive years a record quantity of the drug has been seized at the bloc’s borders, according to a report by the European Union Drugs Agency. 100 tonnes of the drug were intercepted in Spain last year, more than double the amount seized in 2022, AFP reported.

The EU’s largest ever drug seizure took place in June, when German police intercepted 35.5 tons of cocaine in Hamburg and in the Dutch port city of Rotterdam.