The main evidence of smuggling against the former Galician mayor 'Nené' Barral falls apart

José Ramón Barral,

, the former mayor of the PP who in 2001 had to leave the mayor's office after being arrested for tobacco smuggling (a charge that accompanied him during his long political career), has won the first judicial game after sitting on the bench with at least 15 years late.

The oldest case in Spain against an organization of tobacconists, with connections in the US, the Persian Gulf and Europe, and the last legal blow of the historic Galician networks, finally came to trial, but it fell apart before the already eighty-year-old

testify for a cache of half a million packs for which he faces a sentence of 10 years in prison and a fine of 15 million euros.

The court invalidated the wiretaps, fundamental evidence in the case, because Customs began the investigation after intercepting radio communication between two ships, when they were supposedly preparing a cocaine discharge, but without a court order.

From the origin of those wiretaps, now cancelled, the organization chart of the supposed tobacco organization was outlined in which Barral was located at its peak, giving specific instructions from the office of the mayor's office of Ribadumia (Pontevedra) to his lackeys and the four officials (two civil guards and two customs officers) who, according to the accusation, were in the pay of the alderman in exchange for reporting on the progress of the police investigations.

Now, most of that accusatory story remains a dead letter when the court admits the annulment of the punctures, which date back to February 1999.

The stumbles for the case to come to trial and now the forceful order of the Audiencia de Pontevedra have left the Prosecutor's Office unarmed.

In fact, the court of the fourth section has also declared invalid the "data, findings and evidence" obtained through the canceled wiretaps, so they must be expelled from the procedure.

But this new setback in the interminable process against Barral will not prevent the Pontevedra Prosecutor's Office from continuing to try to save the matter, already deflated by its lengthy investigation, although it will have to rebuild its indictment in which Barral is considered the leader of this organization, between 1996 and 2001, dedicated to introducing counterfeit Chinese tobacco into European territory, which it accuses of illicit association, smuggling and bribery.

After the matter passed through the hands of three prosecutors and as many judges, the public accusation has been assumed by the chief prosecutor himself, Juan Carlos Aladro, who tried to reach an agreement in accordance with the defendants without success.

As if that were not enough, the person who was primarily responsible for the investigation, territorial head of the Customs Surveillance Service and witness for the prosecution, died last year.

All in all, Aladro admits that the case is complex, but he is convinced that there is room to act with procedural guarantees.

"There is still a case and we will continue," defended the head of the Prosecutor's Office.

Barral has always denied the charges that cut short his fourth absolute majority as mayor of his town of 5,000 inhabitants.

The challenge of the punctures requested by his lawyer has had a domino effect for the rest of the defenses of the 12 defendants.

The lawyer Carmen Ventoso stated that the investigation has been "prospective", with wiretaps on more than 100 telephones of some 70 people, and for two years, which were authorized to the Customs Surveillance Service (SVA) by the number one investigative court of Vilagarcía, which was then directed by Judge José Antonio Vázquez Taín.

And that cache of cocaine that was being pursued led to another of tobacco that arrived in Vigo between plywood pallets.

All the lawyers argued that the crimes would already be prescribed, while the matter became entangled with another previous case opened by the National Court, which gave rise to raising the lack of jurisdiction to judge the case in Galicia.

Ventoso denied that Barral had committed a crime of smuggling or bribery, since the four containers in transit seized with packs of the Magnum Especial brand, which were only sold in the United Kingdom, did not leave the free zone of the port of Vigo, when there was still the possibility of declaring the merchandise.

The defense lawyers of the Customs Surveillance and Civil Guard agents accused of revealing secrets argued that these facts had already been tried and acquitted by the Supreme Court for the same crime, for which they asked to annul the process.

An argument that the prosecutor rejected, who, although he admitted that they are the same actors, clarified that the previous case referred to a hashish trafficking operation and not tobacco smuggling, trying to prevent the court from knocking down the trial.

After the parenthesis of the pandemic, the trial began in July of last year, but the absence of one of the defendants due to illness forced it to be delayed until the end of September.

After the five-month hiatus that the court needed to rule on the annulment of the wiretaps, May 15 was considered as a possible date to resume the hearing, although sources from the Superior Court of Galicia (TSXG) have indicated that there is still no pointing.

A summary of intrigues, betrayals and leaks

On the morning of May 14, 2001,

Barral was handcuffed at his home in Ribadumia by Customs agents who had been monitoring his movements since the 1980s.

Almost at the same time, his brother Feliciano, then president of the local executive of the PP, was also arrested.

The fall of the Barral brothers shook the foundations of the party in which they had militated with the initials of AP, in the midst of the era of Aznar and Manuel Fraga.

The man who became one of the most influential politicians of the time in the Rías Baixas, practically governed by the seagull brand, and with a direct link in La Moncloa, had to resign convinced that he had been betrayed.

At the start of the trial, the prosecutor described Barral's double life dotted with intrigues, betrayals and leaks that has been reflected in an investigation that began in 1996, a year after the death of his mentor, businessman Vicente Otero, considered the father of the Galician contraband and also a prominent member of the popular.

In his argument, the prosecutor emphasized the personality of

as a boss who gave orders from his mayor's phone and received leaks from the same headquarters of the Customs Surveillance Service (SVA) in A Coruña, and by two agents of the Civil Guard, in exchange for succulent amounts of money.

But for some of these customs officers the payroll was not enough and he demanded even more from Barral under threat of revealing his alleged business.

The information that these officials supposedly provided the former mayor to guarantee the transfer of the caches to Galicia even led to the suspension of two operations programmed by the organization in the months of February and October 1999, the prosecution maintains.

Barral had to deal with an extensive organization made up of Portuguese, Dutch, Croatian, Swiss, British, Polish and Greek citizens, in addition to the connections that the network had in North America and the Sultanate of Oman for the shipment and transit of the shipments.

A reconstruction of the facts of the Prosecutor's Office, typical of a film script, which the court has left out of a case that began with 43 defendants and has been reduced to 12.

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