Two of the Dutchmen arrested last week in Spain for their relationship with cocaine trafficker organization from Costa Rica that used banana shipments as a screen, are linked to the popular Spanish drug trafficker “Sito Miñanco”.
José Ramón Prado Bugallo, aka “Sito Miñanco”, is one of the emblematic figures of Spanish drug trafficking. He was one of the strong men in smuggling and moving cocaine from Latin America to the coasts of Galicia in the 1980s. His life served as the basis for the book ‘Fariña’ by the Spanish journalist Nacho Carretero and for the homonymous series broadcasted on the Netflix platform.
Miñanco, 63, was arrested in 1994 and served a 20-year prison sentence for drug trafficking, smuggling, and tax evasion.
In 2015, he was released on parole; however, he was arrested again in February 2018 for international drug trafficking activities.
According to the newspaper El Pais, the two Dutchmen arrested for sending the drug from the territory are known as Sanders and Gommans. Both were seen with Miñanco in a police follow-up done last year in a restaurant in the city of Málaga.
On that occasion, the Dutch gave Miñanco a briefcase that-presumably-contained money. For the authorities cited in the publication, there is no doubt that there was a link for drug trafficking activities.
The key was always in not losing sight of Sanders and Gommans. ‘Every time they moved, something happened’, sources close to the investigation tell us. They were the right hand of the two Dutch capos, who respond to the initials MCJ and HLM, and who led the organization in Spain. The same people who must have provided some service to Sito last year’,”
quoted El País.
The information published by the Spanish authorities did not provide further details on the links with Costa Rica. The name of the banana exporting company or the tentacles involved in Central American territory was not revealed
According to data from the Promotora de Comercio Exterior (PROCOMER) of Costa Rica, this year more than 47 thousand tons of bananas have been exported from national ports to Portugal.