The nine civil guard officers from Torrevieja and Pilar de la Horadada who were arrested and detained over a month ago on charges of corruption have all been released on bail.
Juana López Hoyos, the magistrate of the Court of Instruction number 2 in Torrevieja, confirmed their release this week on bail of 3,000, 5,000 and 18,000 euros with the amounts relative to each individual’s complicity in the investigation. Two civilians were also released on bail at the same time although another four civilians remain in custody.
In addition to the payment of bail all of the officers and civilians released have been required to surrender their passports and banned from leaving the country.
The judge has also instructed the individuals to appear in court twice a month whilst they remain on bail. They have also been banned from handling or using weapons.
The number of people under scrutiny is thought to be at least 26. All are being investigated for crimes against public health, influence peddling, fraud, failure to prosecute crimes, lying to senior officers and the disclosure of information.
Meanwhile the Unified Association of Civil Guards (AUGC) is not at all happy about the course that the investigation is taking saying that the vast majority of agents operating in the Torrevieja and Pilar de la Horadada police barracks are not at all implicated in the case and completely above suspicion. However al appear to have been tarred with the same brush with many of them suffering collateral damage from the investigation.
They say that investigators should make it absolutely clear that these officers are in no way implicated in the enquiry.
The union have also asked the question as to why all of the agents under investigation are rank and file with no officers or non-commissioned officers so fare being implicated. They say that the involvement of only agents of the basic scale is highly suspicious.
Operation “Sakura” was opened in early 2016 by the Judicial Police of the Civil Guard based in Alicante with the aim of dismantling an organisation dedicated to the trafficking of narcotics with the alleged collaboration of several civil guards.
As the investigation began to unfold phone taps were put on a number of the agents as a result of which further officers were implicated as the enquiry widened.
More than 10,000 documents have now been filed in which criminal situations, many carried out by Guardia officers, are described in detail.
The union added that the judicial intervention has caused a great deal of tension and concern among the agents stationed in Torrevieja. Two civil guards associations have defended the work that is carried out on a daily basis in the Vega Baja and have highlighted the dangers of making sweeping statements about the situation of the security forces, remembering that it was the Civil Guard itself that opened the investigation and is now prosecuting these alleged criminal situations that involve their own colleagues.
