Spain arrests anti-fraud police chief after €20 million 'found in his home'

Spain has arrested the police chief in charge of its economic crimes unit after €20 million was found stashed in the walls of his house, as part of an investigation into the nation's biggest-ever cocaine bust, according to local media.

Authorities reportedly arrested Óscar Sánchez Gil last week, along with 15 other people, including his romantic partner who is also a police officer in Madrid. Sánchez Gil was until recently the head of the fraud and anti-money laundering division of the national police.

Police found €20 million hidden in the walls and ceilings of Sánchez Gil and his partner's home in Alcala de Henares — a small town east of Madrid — and also discovered €1 million locked away in Gil's office, law enforcement sources told Spanish media.

The detainees have been charged with drug trafficking, bribery, money laundering, corruption and criminal organisation, the sources said.

The arrests are linked to the seizure last month of 13 tonnes of cocaine hidden in a cargo container of bananas shipped from Ecuador to southern Spain. The bust was the second largest recorded in Europe and one of the biggest worldwide, according to the police.

Spanish police said the container — which had arrived from Guayaquil, Ecuador's largest city — was inspected at Spain's southern port of Algeciras because the Ecuadorian exporter had been flagged as having a "history of illicit trafficking".

Following the bust, officers searched five homes and offices in Madrid and Alicante and uncovered links between the importer and Sánchez Gil, Spanish media reported.

Sánchez Gil previously worked in the national police's narcotics division, where he first made contact with the bosses of criminal networks while purportedly working to fight drug trafficking, according to El Mundo. The police chief later showed the drug gangs how to evade police controls when smuggling cocaine from Ecuador, the newspaper said.

Police sources told Spanish media that the money seized from the home of Sánchez Gil and his partner was not proceeds from the latest cocaine bust but rather the profits they had made over several years as collaborators with criminal gangs.

After last week's announcement of the 13 tonnes of cocaine discovered in Algeciras, narcotics police chief António Jesús Martínez said the drugs "were intended to be distributed throughout Europe".

European countries have been wrestling with a soaring influx of hard drugs, including cocaine, that are mainly smuggled into EU container ports from Latin America.