Advisor José Luis Galiana's poster, on the page SOS Disappeared.
José Luis Galiana's trail vanished at the bottom of a cliff.
It was on February 18, when his red Audi-1 appeared in one of the best-known coves in the district of Orihuela Costa (Alicante), Punta Prima.
Clumsy, completely overturned and leaning on its own roof on the shore of the Mediterranean.
But empty.
Thus began the mysterious case of the disappearance of Galiana, a financial advisor from Murcia, 49 years old, 1.85 meters tall, corpulent complexion, black hair and green eyes, who that day was wearing a dark blue jacket, according to the description that his family He provided the National Center for the Disappeared, which issued an alert with his photo.
After spending six months unaccounted for, he returned to his home at the end of July, where he was detained by the National Police.
He is accused of several crimes of an economic nature,
A foreign firm has constantly threatened him since 2019, his lawyer, Pablo Ruiz Palacios, reveals to EL PAÍS.
The starting point was a business offer published in an economic newspaper.
“He read in the ad that a foreign company was requesting a delegated agent for an international financial operation.
He contacts them, sends all the documentation they request and becomes the delegate in Spain”.
The company was a multinational company based in Singapore.
Shortly after, he "set up an operation to finance a real estate development project in Murcia" and his bosses demanded "a significant payment" for "operation expenses."
Convinced that everything would work out, the advisor took "about 230,000 euros" from the account of HUMA Mediterráneo, the firm in which he acts as bankruptcy administrator.
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When the managers of the Asian firm detected that Galiana had easy access to large amounts of money, they began to "demand more income from her without the projected operation going ahead," according to her legal representative.
All the payments he made, except the initial one, were “intimidating”.
"They extort money and threaten him with information about his family, with the name of his children's school, they come to visit him personally," adds Ruiz Palacios.
When he emptied the coffers of everyone around him, "they ask for more."
"He was caught," continues the defender, "he did not file a complaint out of fear or tell the family."
And, much less, to the owner of the firm in bankruptcy.
This led to the episode of the alleged accident in Punta Prima, in February.
Just two months later,
Between his advice, his family's promoter and a firm for which he was a bankruptcy administrator, Galiana had allegedly generated an accounting hole of nearly one million euros.
The detainee lived in a "borderline situation" the day of his disappearance, when he was driving towards the Alicante coast, about 60 kilometers from Murcia, as a result of the alleged extortion by the Asian multinational.
"According to his account," continues the lawyer, "at that moment he wanted to take his own life, but he thought of his wife and his children and decided to disappear."
In order not to leave a trace, he pushed his vehicle into the sea and carried out an "improvised" escape.
Those six months in which he was apparently disappeared, he "spent in Spain and in a nearby country."
It is all that according to his version he has told the agents of the Economic and Fiscal Crime Group of the National Police who are investigating his case.
"She saw the need to disappear, she was prey to an insurmountable fear," says Ruiz Palacios.
After his return, at the end of July, Galiana contacted the lawyer to "face the situation and defend himself".
Both went to the National Police on August 9.
The adviser confessed that he had responded to the extortion with money from his private consultancy, from the family urban firm Morgil II SL and from HUMA Mediterráneo.
The total funds appropriated amounted to "about one million euros," explains the lawyer.
The imbalance in HUMA, a company that had initially denounced it for fraud, "is greater than 600,000 euros", the researchers calculate from "numerous documentation and relevant information on bank accounts located in Singapore and the United States, provisions made, transfers, as well as by the statements provided by the different parties in the process”.
Galiana "actively collaborates" in the investigations, underlines his lawyer.
The adviser ended up arrested and, after his statement, was released.
On September 29, he is summoned as investigated by the Court of Instruction 7 of Murcia.
Meanwhile, "the efforts to fully clarify the facts and locate the money" continue, add the police sources.
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