The Civil Guard investigates for the second time the employer of two missing day laborers in Jaén

Olive groves in the municipality of Villacarrillo, in Jaén.PACO PUENTES

There is a compromising video that has been running these days on some mobile phones in Villacarrillo (Jaén).

In it you see Ginés VL, the man who is being investigated for the second time by the Civil Guard for the disappearance of two immigrant day laborers in the municipality, sneaking in and out through the window of a closed bar.

It is a place owned by him that he has rented for a decade, and that was originally run by his family.

The assault occurred a few months ago, in broad daylight, around two in the afternoon, when the tenants had locked up.

Ginés looks from one side to the other before entering and leaving to make sure that no one sees him, and takes a plastic bag out the bar window that he puts in his car, parked right at the door, closes it and leaves.

Ginés inherited that bar from his parents, whose house is on a nearby street.

He was also touched by the family inheritance, which he shares with two sisters, some olive groves in the neighboring town of Villanueva del Arzobispo (8,000 inhabitants).

There, on the La Moratilla estate (about 5,000 olive trees), these days the agents of the Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard have returned to look for any trace of the two temporary workers that Ginés had on a salary: Tidiany Coulibaly, a 22-year-old Malian, and Ibrahima Dioufun, 32-year-old Senegalese. Both disappeared suddenly, after arguments with him, always over labor issues, although eight years apart: the first, on December 17, 2013;

and second, on January 5, 2021.

Capture of the video in which Ginés VL is seen sneaking out of the window of the bar that he rents.

"When I saw this week in the news that Ginés was being investigated again for other identical events, I couldn't believe it, my guts turned," explains Jesús Castro, a priest belonging to the diocese of Jaén, who was based in Villacarrillo and helped Coulibaly's family and friends find legal advice back in the day.

He remembers the "arrogance" and "cockiness" with which the businessman spoke in the trial held in 2016, accused of kidnapping, in addition to labor exploitation.

He was acquitted of the first offense due to insufficient evidence and convicted of the second.

“It was clear to all of us, after the thorough investigation by the Civil Guard, the many contradictions in their different testimonies and that hearing, that he had made Tidiany disappear, but when they did not find the body they acquitted him, leaving us with a terrible feeling of rage and impotence”, assures the priest unashamedly.

"Killing a

, as he called it in the recordings provided by the investigators, came out well and for free," he recalls.

Ginés' phone was tapped for months.

In the wiretaps it is evident that he knew it, he commented on it with friends and relatives who telephoned him and sent messages to the investigators themselves.

A woman walks down Perales Street in Villacarrillo. PACO PUENTES

In the first disappearance, eight years ago, the investigators maintained the hypothesis that there was a struggle between Ginés and Tidiany with a fatal outcome, which led the former to dispose of the body of the latter.

Now, when history repeats itself in an almost identical way, the agents who re-register and search their properties in search of any new clues because they suspect that "it may be repeating a pattern."

There are few people in the town who wield Ginés VL's right to the presumption of innocence: "You have to think about that family, his wife and small children, his in-laws... There are already victims, whether there is a crime or not ”, they comment.

For his part, the mayor, Paco Miralles (PP), limits himself to saying that he "is collaborating with the Civil Guard and with justice."

Ginés avoided expressing himself for this newspaper, as did his lawyer, Leopoldo Rubiales, the same one who represented him the previous time.

In the midst of the media commotion that the case has caused again, the images of Ginés sneaking into the bar were posted on Facebook for a few minutes this week, which became the center of the comments of the residents of Villacarrillo, but they were immediately deleted.

In its day that video went to the barracks of the armed institute in the form of a complaint from those who then ran the bar, although it was later withdrawn "for fear of reprisals", as confirmed by those involved in the events.

A life full of altercations

The life of Ginés, 54, married to a lawyer who works in a notary's office, with whom he has two children aged 9 and 15, is full of confrontations and messes that those who have worked for him or have had relationships with him remember. contracts of some kind.

Many of the altercations have taken place in that bar at the entrance to the town, with a small patio covered by a vine as a terrace.

"The voices and insults, there, in full view of everyone, were common between him and his parents, especially with his mother," they remember.

The family is known as Los Correas in this Jaen municipality of 10,500 inhabitants surrounded by a sea of ​​olive trees that turns the Sierra de Cazorla almost into an island.

Three older men watch the execution of a work in Villacarrillo. PACO PUENTES

Although many neighbors say, at first, that he may seem "a man of correct and affable treatment", they assure that later, "in a matter of seconds, he turns and becomes aggressive".

"It's been like this since school," says one of his classmates.

"Problematic", "conflictive", "sulky", "bipolar behavior" describe him.

On this occasion, the investigators have again searched their farms, their farmhouses and their wells, as well as the warehouse where the immigrants lived in Villacarrillo (whose light was illegally hooked up to the electric current) and the garage next to the bar (with the light hooked up to that of the premises), where he keeps agricultural machinery and "where he spent a good part of the day, alone", according to some of the tenants of the business.

The bar has never been inspected, but in light of accounts from different tenants, it holds its own secrets.

In the Ginés bar, they say, "there is a hidden well in the patio", "where the table football was once placed", they remember, "right next to the kitchen window".

"It was a fake well," says another.

"There was a chest on the ground that was raised, with a blue lid," adds another.

"It could be connected to the nearby garage, where it has the machines in the field and where it spent the day stuck," they conjecture after assuring that at night they saw movements inside the bar, when it was closed.

A little over a year ago, in the spring of 2021, Ginés changed the floor of the patio, “at the request of the penultimate tenant”, and cemented it, leaving that supposed well buried, several agree.

looking for an alibi

Most of his tenants have ended badly with the employer.

And if something is proven —and this is what is stated in the sentence issued by the Provincial Court of Jaén that acquitted him of the kidnapping charge— it is that Ginés coerced, threatened and intimidated the people who had rented his bar at the time so that they would give him a alibi the day Tidiany Coulibaly disappeared.

“There was a half-hour blind spot, between 12:30 and 1:00 p.m., the estimated time of disappearance, which he had no way of justifying,” recalls Francisco Javier Pulido, the lawyer who represented the family and temporary friends of the Malian. .

“He rented the bar for a time from María LM and Miguel Ángel M. B, […]

and asked them to declare that they saw him on December 17, 2013 between 1:00 p.m. and 1:15 p.m., knowing that this was false, offering them in exchange not to claim the rent for the rest of the lease, ”says the sentence.

"It was three days with the same purpose: May 8, 9 and 28, 2014."

“He persecuted them [August 2, 2014, around 12:40 p.m.] and verbally threatened them,” until causing the court to issue a restraining order against the accused.

He did not give up on her efforts and "tried to get María LM fired from her job," who was so scared that he sent her daughter out of Villacarrillo for a month, the text says.

On July 24, he sent a message to María LM in which he said: "I'm not pressuring you, I'm just asking for mine."

For his part, according to Miguel Ángel MB's statement at the trial, he threatened him saying that "he knew people in Martos", his place of residence, and also that "he knew the prosecutor".

The geolocation of Ginés' cell phone placed him on December 17, 2013 at 1:00 p.m. in Villanueva del Arzobispo.

That is why they searched there, and the Civil Guard investigators have returned to the same place this week.

Also then, to questions from the lawyer at the trial, Ginés replied that he had received military training because "he belonged to the Army Special Operations Corps (COES)".

An aspect confirmed by sources of the Civil Guard investigation.

In the countryside, where this season the olive harvesting tasks have not yet begun, olive growers adjoining their land affirm that Ginés "has always done strange things", such as "sending his laborers to pick olives on land that was not his and then say that they had been wrong” or “let his mother take kilos of harvested olives that he later did not count to the day laborers, who charge per kilo.”

He was convicted of labor exploitation, since he paid immigrant day laborers half of what was established in the farm agreement.

All these issues have turned Ginés VL into a "lonely" and controversial neighbor who in recent days has not been seen by what are supposedly his usual places.

Investigated for a second alleged kidnapping, it is so true that his controversial character does not make him a criminal as there is no perfect crime.