Walter Finch
A GERMAN couple who disappeared in a crime-ridden neighbourhood of Barcelona may have been fleeing from debts they had built up with international cocaine traffickers.
Ralf Buchholz and Petra Gehde, both 53, have not been heard from since July 19, when their campervan was found unlocked with the key in the ignition in La Mina, in the Sant Adria de Besos part of the city.
Inside were their belongings, including suitcases, two electric bikes, medication, Petra’s passport and – most worryingly – their pet cat and dog in cages.
The couple were last seen on the same day checking out of a hotel in La Jonquera, a small stopover town near the French border, reportedly in the company of a mysterious third person.
Now, former employees of Ralf and Petra worry that their Hamburg-based wholesale fruit and veg company might have been moving something else, too.
“Ralf bought the fruit and veg company last year, inheriting all the staff from the previous owner,” an anonymous ex-worker told the Olive Press.
“Then we received shipments of pineapples and bananas from Colombia in May, but we never received the invoices for them.
“What we did get, on the other hand, were the locations of the containers – but only a few were unloaded.
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“The rest were not. They remained at the port until the beginning of this year and then they were disposed of at some point.
“If I’m honest, we all suspected that there were drugs in there. We assumed that Ralf had something to do with that, but we weren’t sure.”
Ralf reportedly operated a second company involved in shipping and transportation that went into insolvency proceedings on July 10 after accumulating too many debts.
“I don’t know what is happening to the companies now,” the worker continued.
“They have closed down and us employees are no longer working there. Because many suppliers were not paid, we no longer received goods for our customers to deliver to them.”
The source described Ralf as an ‘arsehole’ and Petra as a ‘sweetheart’, the pair having been together for 8 years.
“But she was afraid of him because he had a temper and he didn’t treat her well. I think she was afraid of leaving him.”
Workers have speculated that that couple have ‘fake IDs’ and were looking to disappear, with Ralf mentioning in May that he wanted to ‘visit Mexico’ before the end of the year.
The pair had initially told staff that they were taking a short vacation to ‘disconnect’ from work for a while.
But investigators said that Ralf and Petra checked in and out of the hotel in La Junquera on the same day, indicating they arrived after midnight, slept a few hours, and then left – in the company of the third person.
From La Junquera, it is a two hour drive to La Mina, a notorious neighbourhood in the Catalan capital where the Volkswagen van, with its German number plate, stood out.
“I think the two of them wanted to get away using their fake IDs, which is why they took the animals with them,” the worker said.
But ‘perhaps they had not anticipated the need for papers and muzzles for the animals if they continued by train and boat, so they left them behind.’
“Ralf is the kind of person who doesn’t care what happens to the animals. But if they were only going on holiday, why bring the cat along too? The dog I understand, but who takes their cat on holiday?”
Various other mysteries abound in the pair’s strange disappearance.
Neighbours who live on the same street in Neuenkirchen, a small town near the border with Holland, said a red Volkswagen van had disappeared from outside their house the day after they vanished on July 20.
Neighbours also started to notice that furniture had disappeared from the rented house on or around July 26, while the whereabouts of a large black lorry the couple bought shortly before their disappearance is unknown.
A BMW that they owned also disappeared sometime before July 19.
The disappearance of so many valuable items prompted some to speculate the couple had gone on a massive fire sale to get their hands on cash, while other sources played it down.
“We only know that these vehicles have disappeared, nothing else,” said one figure close to the case.
“They could be locked away in a garage somewhere.”
But they cautioned: “Ralf is a person who looks for any opportunity to make money.”
Meanwhile, a sweeping police operation in Germany and Holland has managed to seize more than 35 tonnes of cocaine, with 25 tonnes being confiscated in the Port of Hamburg.
According to reports from June, the investigation, codenamed ‘Plexis’, was complicated by the fact that the perpetrators ‘operated a network of several dozen companies to handle the cocaine trade.’
Seven were arrested in Germany in May this year with ‘probably many more since then’, according to sources in Germany.
