Francisco Tejón, alias 'Castaña', entering the trial held at the Provincial Court of Algeciras this Friday. Marcos Moreno
The voice of Antonio Tejón,
Castaña
, considered one of the kings of hashish in the Strait along with his brother Francisco, sounds muffled and sad on the public address system in the courtroom.
“I am innocent, what they are doing to me is an injustice.
I have nothing to do with all those who are sitting there on the bench, ”he announces, before taking advantage of his right not to testify in court.
The tone, almost copied later by his brother when he warned that he will not speak either, contrasts with the image of powerful capos capable of gaining the trust of Moroccan suppliers to move boats packed with bundles of hashish, to buy the will of policemen, and of financing whims and parties just by picking up a phone.
The anti-drug prosecutor of Campo de Gibraltar, Macarena Arroyo, asks for 20 years in prison and a fine of four million euros for both brothers, accused, as gang leaders, of crimes against public health, receiving and illicit possession of weapons.
Along with them, 14 other people, members of the group, sit on the bench, for whom 11 years in prison are requested.
On the bench at the Algeciras headquarters of the Cádiz Provincial Court, one more defendant was missing, David MG, accused of guarding a drug nursery.
He passed away this week of natural causes.
The trial is the result of two years of investigation, between 2015 and 2016, based on monitoring and wiretapping that portray the tentacles of the most powerful drug trafficking organization in the Strait, according to the Campo de Gibraltar Anti-Drug Prosecutor's Office.
Most of the defendants have accepted their right not to testify, confident that their strategy of being acquitted will prosper due to the nullity of the punctures and other alleged irregularities that their defenses have raised.
However, the responses of three alleged members of the gang —the national police officers Luis BB and Moisés BB, brothers, and the local police officer Javier ZB— have served to reconstruct a part of that life of opulence that was revealed in the
Ronal operation.
.
In one of the wiretaps, agent Luis BB admits: "I hate drug trafficking, but my best friend is the biggest trafficker in La Línea de la Concepción."
And in another he jokes: "Isco has races, specifically the ones he takes on the beach."
This Friday, the policeman, with a cocky tone towards the Prosecutor's Office, has denied remembering both statements and has assured that many of them are just "nonsense, intimate jokes."
The lawyer Gonzalo Boye speaks with his client Francisco Tejón, the eldest of the Castañas brothers, during the trial held at the Algeciras Provincial Court this Friday. Marcos Moreno
One of those jokes included in the case refers to the prostitutes that Tejón supposedly paid for a party in Gibraltar on a Friday in June 2016. In it, the police brothers Moisés and Luis do not hesitate to go accompanied by Francisco Tejón to a meeting in the one that said goodbye to a fellow sub-inspector who was leaving La Línea.
The three agents have acknowledged being childhood friends of Isco Tejón, ties that were "closer", as Moisés has recognized, after the three met regularly to train in a gym in the center of La Línea and left party on various occasions.
By the way, they have exposed the way of being of each of the brothers.
The oldest, most extroverted and partying – he was the same one who starred in a reggaeton video clip while he was on the run in 2018 – Antonio is a much more homely person.
“He is not a party person, he is very calm,” explained the same policeman, now separated from the body.
What the three have denied is having collaborated with them in their drug movements, despite the fact that the Prosecutor's Office assures that they benefited from invitations to parties, in exchange for "reporting the organization of the police activity."
“They are accusing these gentlemen of a criminal organization that manages 30 million euros.
What am I, the fool?
What gift have they given me to put my professional career at risk and embarrass my father?” asked Moisés on the verge of tears.
The deputy inspector entertained with the party in Gibraltar in 2016 is now one of the witnesses that the Prosecutor's Office will call to testify in the next sessions in May and June.
The relevance or not of these testimonies proposed by the Prosecutor's Office —in principle there were 15, but they have remained at five— has entangled the debate.
At the start of this Friday's session, the lawyers of the 16 defendants have been especially belligerent in trying unsuccessfully to invalidate them.
Gonzalo Boye, Isco Tejón's lawyer, has come to point out that the procedure "is riddled with illegal wiretapping" and has assured that he will file a complaint against the chief prosecutor of Algeciras, Juan Cisneros, for "criminalizing" them.
The
Ronal operation
It is only the first of the great operations that now judicially surround a gang that the police have even accused —in this case, the lieutenant of the Samuel Crespo brothers— of collaborating with the Calabrian mafia of the ' Ndrangheta.
In the next sessions, which will be held throughout the months of May and June, the key will be to show if the brothers Antonio and Isco were behind the three stashes -one not intervened- that they are accused of in this case.
From that first cause, another one of money laundering has been separated, in which that life of opulence of the Tejón brothers must be judged, to the extent that Isco is attributed the ownership of more than 10 companies —of one of exchange of couples to a clean point or an aesthetic clinic—despite not having a known working life.
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