The collaboration between the Swedish and Spanish police made it possible to dismantle last year an alleged criminal organization that exported marijuana and hashish in large quantities from Andalusia to the Nordic country. The judge of the National High Court, Manuel García Castellón, proposed on September 29 to try 27 people as members of the network, including Lars Gunnar Broberg, husband of the mayor of Marbella and senator of the Popular Party, Ángeles Muñoz, with whom he has two sons. However, the procedure against the businessman has been stopped due to the serious physical and mental deterioration suffered by the accused.
The Anti-Drug Prosecutor’s Office of the National Court and the investigating judge indirectly attribute to the Swedish businessman, based in Marbella for decades, a crime of “active” membership in a criminal organization and another of money laundering from drug trafficking. A sentence for both crimes could reach 14 years in prison. In addition, Lars Gunnar Broberg is one of the defendants to whom the judge imposed a bail of 25 million euros to satisfy possible criminal responsibilities once a sentence was handed down, an obligation that has disappeared after the case against him was stopped.
Lars Gunnar Broberg, 80, is a prosperous businessman dedicated to construction to whom the mayor of Marbella – a family doctor before entering politics – attributes the luxurious life that she, her children and stepchildren enjoy. The family has traditionally resided in a mansion that real estate portals value at 12 million euros and that the couple acquired when they bought a company in Gibraltar to which the luxurious home belonged.
Precisely, one of Ángeles Muñoz’s stepsons, Joakim Peter Broberg, is considered one of the leaders of the criminal organization. When the Police and Civil Guard exploited their investigations, on February 9, 2021, Joakim Peter was not in Spain, although he was later arrested in Brazil. His father, 80 years old, was arrested in Marbella and later released without precautionary measures.
As described in the indictment, to which elDiario.es has had access, “from the investigation concluded to the procedural historical moment and in a serious degree of probability, it is concluded that we are facing a criminal organization led by citizens of Swedish nationality settled in Spain with members of German and Polish nationality”.
The organization, continues the judge, is dedicated to “drug trafficking, mainly hashish and marijuana, which they export in large quantities from Spain to the Nordic countries, mainly Sweden.” The investigated group acts, concludes the instructor, “with the aim of obtaining large and rapid profits, carrying out money laundering and concealment activities through the use of third countries.”
The aforementioned order is a summary of the seizures of drugs from the organization and the laundering operations of the profits obtained. One of the stepsons of the mayor of Marbella, named Joakim Broberg, “acts as boss and is in charge of maintaining contact with the suppliers and clients” of the drug, the first located in Morocco, while the buyers are Swedish and others. Northern European countries.
The real estate activity, which has given so much revenue to Lars Gunnar Broberg, is key in the investigation of the plot in Marbella. The judge speaks of “a complex structure in which relationships of hierarchy and discipline can be recognized, in which Joakim Broberg [hijo de Lars e hijastro de la alcaldesa] acts as chief, holding a preponderant place”.
The proximity of the mayor’s stepson to the field of local administration has not gone unnoticed by investigators. García Castellón assures that Joakim Broberg has “contacts in the real estate field” and “facilitates meetings with people who perform public functions, or exerts influence over certain officials to obtain necessary information in the context of their criminal activities.”
For his part, Joakim’s father and Angeles Muñoz’s husband, Lars Gunnar Broberg, appears in two operations to divert the origin of the money, always in aid of his son. It is, according to the provisional conclusions of the judge, the constitution of screen companies to carry out real estate operations. For this, the organization creates the company Altario Investement SL. The money laundering operation would have been directed by Joakim “with the knowledge and supervision of his father”, collects the car.
The second operation in which Muñoz’s husband appears is linked to the acquisition of a farm called El Herrojo, through a complicated money circulation system, with an exchange of loans and shares in which Altario Investement, the company created by Joakim and Lars Gunnar Broberg. Here the laundered amount is encrypted, 2,009,820 euros.
After the arrest of her stepson and her husband, the mayor of Marbella said that the honorability of her husband would be demonstrated when “the secret of the summary” was lifted. “Everything will be black on white,” she said then. Muñoz also linked the police and judicial operation to an attempt to harm the image of Marbella.
María Ángeles Muñoz is in her third term as mayor of Marbella, a position she first came to in 2007 with the promise of regenerating local politics after the mandates of Jesús Gil and Julián Muñoz. Her power in the Marbella PP has been absolute for 23 years. In October 2021, she was re-elected for the fourth term in an act in which she received the support of the president of the Andalusian Government, Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, and the then president of the Xunta, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who traveled to Marbella to the occasion.
The councilor was involved between 2010 and 2020 in the Lindes case, the transfer of some land in Marbella in 2009 to the neighboring town of Benahavís, which made it possible to build in the area, 63% owned by a company whose sole administrator was Lars Gunnar Broderg, the husband of María Ángeles Muñoz. The case reached the Supreme Court, promoted by the Prosecutor’s Office, but the High Court rejected any responsibility of Muñoz in the events.
Muñoz, who arrived in the town of San Pedro de Alcántara in the nineties as a family doctor, is 62 years old, has two children from a previous marriage and two stepchildren of Lars Gunnar Broberg. One of the latter is Joakim Broberg, 49, who adds drug trafficking to the crimes attributed to his father (criminal organization and money laundering), in the indictment of Judge García Castellón.
Among the public officials with whom he has contact is a local police officer, dependent on the Marbella City Council, who has also been prosecuted. The agent would have “provided information restricted to police use at the request of Joakim Broberg, in exchange for cash,” according to the case.
