Framing Spain’S Invisible Man: Rafael LouzáN
It is hard to believe that Rafael Louzan is still a free man. The president of Pontevedra, a province of Galicia in Spain, has throughout his nearly 20 years in local politics woven a network of drug and tobacco smugglers, money launderers and embezzlers that reaches from South America to Madrid. But, after the financial and tax crimes unit UDEF raided his offices alongside those of companies that hold government contracts, perhaps his days of freedom are numbered.
The native Pontevedran never finished school, and instead started out as a night guard for a sport facility in Ribadumia, a small town towards the Portuguese border known for its wine production as well as trafficking of drugs and tobacco, in 1988. He soon developed a taste for the illicit trade and for politics, and was elected to the council of Pontevedra eight years after he started his first job.
Louzan knows that connections are everything in drugs and in politics, and so he fostered them. Mariano Rajoy Brey, now Spain's prime minister, is a close, as is Alberto Nunez Feijoo, president of Galicia and de-facto boss of Louz?‚n. In 2003, Louzan became president of Pontevedra, a post Rajoy held 20 years before him and the former Franco ministerial aide and president of the Galicia Popular Party, Crespo Xose Cuina, held during the last 1980s.
Louzan has certainly not invented the link between politics and drugs in Spain, and in particular the entangled web of drugs and the leading Popular Party: the PP is known for being funded by drug barons, for its rampant cronyism and pressuring the Spanish press to withhold uncomfortable stories. This may be why the entire network of Louz?‚n has never been fully revealed, and his complicity in this link also explains why the powerful PP, which receives large donations from drugs cartels, put him in charge of Pontevedra. This is Spain's drug port to South America - and Spain is the drug port for Europe.
Columbian gangs have favoured Pontevedra with its seemingly sleepy harbors, coves and estuaries on the Atlantic coast, because it is so easy to land small boats here undetected. The fishing boats go out to sea and reload cocaine and other drugs from larger boats that just crossed the Atlantic.
The drugs trade is so entrenched in the region that nobody hides their ill-begotten wealth anymore. Large villas with flash cars are everywhere - drug smugglers can, after all, command 25% to 30% of the value of the loot. Equally, companies are used for money laundering, and businesses that are apparently set up for tourists, like restaurants, also make for welcome laundering operations.
With the complicit, uneducated Louzan at the steering wheel, it is no wonder that the smuggler gangs of Pontevedra have become more violent. The gangs that operate here have been described as the most violent that ever plagued Europe - worse than the Italian mafia - and kidnappings and shootings are commonplace. Louzan has been notable only for his silence on the issue that has flourished under his nose and with his help, and he clearly benefits from turning a blind eye.
Louzan owns property in Pontevedra and in South America, where he sometimes distributes envelopes with cash to secure the votes of emigrants to Spain. He also sent his son to a private school in France, which would have cost around a third of his declared annual salary of ,‚¬66.479,40. Louz?‚n is known to take "commissions" when giving government contracts to firms, and he also receives bribes from the drug cartels.
Here, we reveal the many links Louz?‚n has to the drugs trade, to businesses that front their money laundering, and to complicit party colleagues and officials.
Local drugs and politics
During his early political career in Ribadumia, Louzan and his young family allowed smuggler Jose Prado Bugallo 'Sito Mi?‚±anco' to hide tobacco in their home. This helpful hand must have impressed the local Popular Party, because he was made mayor of the town soon after, which put him on the road to joining the council of Pontevedra in 1996.
Apart from Sito Minanco, Louzan is known to have links to other drug and tobacco traffickers including Marcial Dorado, Daniel Baulo Carballo and Ramiro Mart?inez Senorans. Dorado was photographed in 1995 with Alberto Feijoo on holidays, pictures that resurfaced last year in a smear campaign orchestrated by Louzan and his close allies Xesus Palmou Lorenzo, justice councillor for the PP in Galicia, judge Jose Antonio Vazquez Tain, and the chief of the Customs Vigilance Service in Galicia, Hermelino Alonso.
But not all of Spain's civil servants were happy with turning a blind eye on the cosy relationship between drugs and politics. In the early 1990s, a broad anti-drug operation was launched under the codename Necora. Some traffickers fled across the Galician border to Portugal, and soon returned to set up businesses in areas like fishing, chicken farming, and alternative energy, in particular wind farms. To wit, Alfonso Galans, a smuggler who was arrested in the mid-1980s, invested in power promotion and fisheries. He soon received a government contract from Pontevedra for his company Vendavales Galaicos, even though the company was newly incorporated with minimum investment.
Several years later, in 2010, the drug importing would cast the spotlight on a colleague of Louz?‚n's, and he promptly jumped to his defense. Evaristo Juncal Carreira, former head of the board of land and infrastructure in Pontevedra, was accused of selling companies to henchmen of the known drug smuggler Marcial Dorado Sito Minanco. Dorado also bribed Hermelino Alonso.
Web of companies
The sale of companies has been a clever way of covering the tracks and putting up legitimate fronts to trafficking and money laundering operations. In 1996, Carreira sold JF OIL to Manuel Lopez Cruz, a strawman of Dorado.
And Carreira went on: six year later, he sold Tracidi to Minicentrales 2000, of which Maria Luisa Fabeiro Vila, widow of Manuel Abal Feijoo 'O Patoco', became director in 2007. That same year, Carreira sold Enxeneria dos Recursos Enerxetico to Alxopar Promocions, a company owned by Jose Alberto Aguin Magdalena, nicknamed 'O Blonde de Aios', which was held in the early 1990s as part of operation Necora as number two in Sito Minanco.
In April 2011, Louzan's network went bold and launched financial management firm Desarrollo Global Atlantico on the Spanish stock exchange - a risky move, given that public companies are subject to strict regulations. But Desarrollo got away with it: the partners were Ramiro Martinez Senorans, a former smuggler and meat and wine trader from Pontevedra who belonged to a group of traffickers together with Olegario Falcon and Sito Minanco, as well as Severino Reguera Varela, a fellow PP member of Louzan in Ponteverda, and Louzan's cousin Juan Abal Pineiro.
But if this web of companies is spun neatly around Louzan, it may be the embezzlement of nearly 30m from the European Union FEDER fund for regional development that could prove his downfall. Nidia Arevalo, Louzan's mistress and former head of social programmes in the Pontevedran city of Mos, put 28.7m from the EU into companies directly associated to her lover. These include the winery Bodegas Agnus Dei, a local building merchant called ridos de Curro, which is run by a relative of Louzn, and Silvanius, another company directly linked to Louzn.
Family men
Cousins have the advantage of being an arm's length relation, and lucky for Louzn, he has a few of those. In 2007, a cousin of his wife, Daniel Mea±o Cores, was sentenced for fives years for his part in distributing cocaine in the Basque and other regions. Juan Abal Pi±eiro of Desarrollo also owns a hotel that Mariano Rajoy holidayed in during the summer of 2013. The publicity helped his business substantially.
The UDEF raid in February may be a sign that the few non-bribed authorities in Galicia are finally on to Louzn, altho
The native Pontevedran never finished school, and instead started out as a night guard for a sport facility in Ribadumia, a small town towards the Portuguese border known for its wine production as well as trafficking of drugs and tobacco, in 1988. He soon developed a taste for the illicit trade and for politics, and was elected to the council of Pontevedra eight years after he started his first job.
Louzan knows that connections are everything in drugs and in politics, and so he fostered them. Mariano Rajoy Brey, now Spain's prime minister, is a close, as is Alberto Nunez Feijoo, president of Galicia and de-facto boss of Louz?‚n. In 2003, Louzan became president of Pontevedra, a post Rajoy held 20 years before him and the former Franco ministerial aide and president of the Galicia Popular Party, Crespo Xose Cuina, held during the last 1980s.
Louzan has certainly not invented the link between politics and drugs in Spain, and in particular the entangled web of drugs and the leading Popular Party: the PP is known for being funded by drug barons, for its rampant cronyism and pressuring the Spanish press to withhold uncomfortable stories. This may be why the entire network of Louz?‚n has never been fully revealed, and his complicity in this link also explains why the powerful PP, which receives large donations from drugs cartels, put him in charge of Pontevedra. This is Spain's drug port to South America - and Spain is the drug port for Europe.
Columbian gangs have favoured Pontevedra with its seemingly sleepy harbors, coves and estuaries on the Atlantic coast, because it is so easy to land small boats here undetected. The fishing boats go out to sea and reload cocaine and other drugs from larger boats that just crossed the Atlantic.
The drugs trade is so entrenched in the region that nobody hides their ill-begotten wealth anymore. Large villas with flash cars are everywhere - drug smugglers can, after all, command 25% to 30% of the value of the loot. Equally, companies are used for money laundering, and businesses that are apparently set up for tourists, like restaurants, also make for welcome laundering operations.
With the complicit, uneducated Louzan at the steering wheel, it is no wonder that the smuggler gangs of Pontevedra have become more violent. The gangs that operate here have been described as the most violent that ever plagued Europe - worse than the Italian mafia - and kidnappings and shootings are commonplace. Louzan has been notable only for his silence on the issue that has flourished under his nose and with his help, and he clearly benefits from turning a blind eye.
Louzan owns property in Pontevedra and in South America, where he sometimes distributes envelopes with cash to secure the votes of emigrants to Spain. He also sent his son to a private school in France, which would have cost around a third of his declared annual salary of ,‚¬66.479,40. Louz?‚n is known to take "commissions" when giving government contracts to firms, and he also receives bribes from the drug cartels.
Here, we reveal the many links Louz?‚n has to the drugs trade, to businesses that front their money laundering, and to complicit party colleagues and officials.
Local drugs and politics
During his early political career in Ribadumia, Louzan and his young family allowed smuggler Jose Prado Bugallo 'Sito Mi?‚±anco' to hide tobacco in their home. This helpful hand must have impressed the local Popular Party, because he was made mayor of the town soon after, which put him on the road to joining the council of Pontevedra in 1996.
Apart from Sito Minanco, Louzan is known to have links to other drug and tobacco traffickers including Marcial Dorado, Daniel Baulo Carballo and Ramiro Mart?inez Senorans. Dorado was photographed in 1995 with Alberto Feijoo on holidays, pictures that resurfaced last year in a smear campaign orchestrated by Louzan and his close allies Xesus Palmou Lorenzo, justice councillor for the PP in Galicia, judge Jose Antonio Vazquez Tain, and the chief of the Customs Vigilance Service in Galicia, Hermelino Alonso.
But not all of Spain's civil servants were happy with turning a blind eye on the cosy relationship between drugs and politics. In the early 1990s, a broad anti-drug operation was launched under the codename Necora. Some traffickers fled across the Galician border to Portugal, and soon returned to set up businesses in areas like fishing, chicken farming, and alternative energy, in particular wind farms. To wit, Alfonso Galans, a smuggler who was arrested in the mid-1980s, invested in power promotion and fisheries. He soon received a government contract from Pontevedra for his company Vendavales Galaicos, even though the company was newly incorporated with minimum investment.
Several years later, in 2010, the drug importing would cast the spotlight on a colleague of Louz?‚n's, and he promptly jumped to his defense. Evaristo Juncal Carreira, former head of the board of land and infrastructure in Pontevedra, was accused of selling companies to henchmen of the known drug smuggler Marcial Dorado Sito Minanco. Dorado also bribed Hermelino Alonso.
Web of companies
The sale of companies has been a clever way of covering the tracks and putting up legitimate fronts to trafficking and money laundering operations. In 1996, Carreira sold JF OIL to Manuel Lopez Cruz, a strawman of Dorado.
And Carreira went on: six year later, he sold Tracidi to Minicentrales 2000, of which Maria Luisa Fabeiro Vila, widow of Manuel Abal Feijoo 'O Patoco', became director in 2007. That same year, Carreira sold Enxeneria dos Recursos Enerxetico to Alxopar Promocions, a company owned by Jose Alberto Aguin Magdalena, nicknamed 'O Blonde de Aios', which was held in the early 1990s as part of operation Necora as number two in Sito Minanco.
In April 2011, Louzan's network went bold and launched financial management firm Desarrollo Global Atlantico on the Spanish stock exchange - a risky move, given that public companies are subject to strict regulations. But Desarrollo got away with it: the partners were Ramiro Martinez Senorans, a former smuggler and meat and wine trader from Pontevedra who belonged to a group of traffickers together with Olegario Falcon and Sito Minanco, as well as Severino Reguera Varela, a fellow PP member of Louzan in Ponteverda, and Louzan's cousin Juan Abal Pineiro.
But if this web of companies is spun neatly around Louzan, it may be the embezzlement of nearly 30m from the European Union FEDER fund for regional development that could prove his downfall. Nidia Arevalo, Louzan's mistress and former head of social programmes in the Pontevedran city of Mos, put 28.7m from the EU into companies directly associated to her lover. These include the winery Bodegas Agnus Dei, a local building merchant called ridos de Curro, which is run by a relative of Louzn, and Silvanius, another company directly linked to Louzn.
Family men
Cousins have the advantage of being an arm's length relation, and lucky for Louzn, he has a few of those. In 2007, a cousin of his wife, Daniel Mea±o Cores, was sentenced for fives years for his part in distributing cocaine in the Basque and other regions. Juan Abal Pi±eiro of Desarrollo also owns a hotel that Mariano Rajoy holidayed in during the summer of 2013. The publicity helped his business substantially.
The UDEF raid in February may be a sign that the few non-bribed authorities in Galicia are finally on to Louzn, altho
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