The Supreme Court has rejected the appeal presented by Civil Guard Colonel Francisco García Santaella against the seven-year sentence for the crimes of drug trafficking and bribery imposed on him by the Provincial Court of Granada. García Santaella was assigned to the General Directorate of the armed institute when elDiario.es revealed in April 2015 that the colonel was being secretly investigated by a court in Granada, which led to his immediate dismissal.
In January 2022, the Provincial Court of Granada sentenced Civil Guard Colonel Francisco García Santaella to seven years and two months in prison for the crimes of drug trafficking and bribery. The same judges had acquitted the high command of the Civil Guard, but the Supreme Court forced them to rewrite the ruling, considering that the ruling in the first instance caused “a certain embarrassment.” Once the case returned to Granada and its Provincial Court sentenced him, the civil guard appealed again to the Supreme Court, which now confirms the sentence of more than seven years in prison.
The sentence amounts to 7 years in prison. There are five years for a crime against public health involving a substance that does not cause serious harm to health, and a fine of six million euros, and another two years and three months for a crime of bribery, as well as an additional fine of 120,000 euros. . The Provincial Court of Granada must now order the entry of García Santaella into prison, to which the parties in person may present their allegations. With a prison sentence of more than five years, only if the convicted person suffered from a serious illness can free him from prison.
The conviction is for collaborating in the introduction of drugs into the illicit market with other people who landed them on the beaches of the Granada coast as controlled deliveries. Furthermore, as compensation for his collaboration in carrying out the aforementioned caches, described in the third and fifth sections of the list of proven facts of the sentence, he received from one of the participants in the operations an amount of money that appears in the facts proven by this collaboration.
García Santaella was accused of having allowed the introduction of a cache of hashish on the coast of Granada when he was responsible for the Command’s anti-drug group, with the rank of commander, in exchange for receiving 360,000 euros, during the years 2005 and 2006. After More than thirty years on the target of the Internal Affairs Service, agents found evidence of the high command’s involvement in drug trafficking. When he was charged, the colonel was stationed at the General Directorate of the Civil Guard and had an office a few meters from the then director, Arsenio Fernández de Mesa.
The Supreme Court considers it proven that there was an agreement and pact between the convicted person and two people to carry out phases of drug entry along the coast, specifically hashish in significant quantities, also declaring two drug entries proven without arrests, all of this to promoting drug trafficking. As a result of such agreement, it was deemed proven that two drug landings occurred. The drug was considered in extremely serious quantities
It had to be Anti-Drug agents from the command who, while listening in on a drug trafficking investigation, heard some comments from the ‘narcos’ about a certain “Father”, with whom they had worked in the past. When the time came to arrest the drug traffickers, they found out that “Father” had been the Anti-Drug Chief of the Command. Colonel Santaella is currently retired. He was removed from his destiny when he was charged.
Add Comment