THE investigation into the Madrid police chief accused of hiding €20 million in his walls is now closing in on the man suspected of laundering the gang’s fortune, and on his ties to the officer’s family.
A National Court judge has authorised Internal Affairs detectives to examine the links between Juan Angel Cervera, known as ‘El Gestor’ (‘the Manager’) or ‘Juan el financiero’, and a nephew of Oscar Sanchez Gil, the disgraced former head of Madrid’s economic crime unit (UDEF).
Police suspect the nephew, who has not been named, had business dealings with Cervera.
They regard Cervera as the head of the network’s money-laundering operation and the main partner of alleged trafficker Ignacio Toran.
Investigators say he handled the gang’s cryptocurrency flows, and he allegedly ran companies used to clean drug money.
Cervera slipped the net just before the first arrests in November 2024.
When officers raided his home in Pozuelo, he had already gone. Instead they found Eduardo Montero Salgado, whom Sanchez Gil had registered with the Interior Ministry as a police informant.
Cervera was eventually tracked down and arrested in Dubai in April 2025 on an international warrant.
Judge Francisco de Jorge approved a request to identify the company where the nephew was registered as working in 2020 and ordered the results to be sent straight to Internal Affairs.
The request came from an Internal Affairs report on the statement Sanchez Gil voluntarily gave in court.
Prosecutors backed the move and proposed asking the Social Security treasury for the nephew’s employment records. They added that they may seek further measures once the full report is in.
The case began with one of the biggest drug busts in Spanish history. In October 2024, 13 tonnes of cocaine were found hidden among banana crates shipped from Ecuador to Algeciras.
The follow-up raids uncovered €20 million stuffed into the walls and ceilings of Sanchez Gil’s home in Alcalá de Henares and another €1 million locked in his office.
The probe has since sprawled well beyond that shipment.
In March, the judge sent Sanchez Gil for trial on charges of drug trafficking, money laundering, bribery and revealing secrets, alleging that the network he protected brought 73 tonnes of cocaine into Spain.
In May, the National Court reversed that decision after prosecutors appealed to keep investigating, and he remains in pre-trial detention without bail.
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