The El Campello couple who ran a fruit company that brought in the container containing 13,062 kilogrammes of cocaine last October—the biggest cocaine haul in Spain and the second in all of Europe—have been evading capture for about five months. After the drugs were found and the couple vanished from the opulent villa in El Campello where they lived with their daughter. José Miguel BC, 58, and his partner, Vilma Janet AB, 51, ended their escape yesterday and turned themselves in at a National Police station in Madrid. They were arrested in response to both national and European arrest warrants.

After the police processes are over, the couple—who are being represented by attorney Francisco Miguel Galiana Botella—will be turned over to the National Court. The police have also been searching hospitals for the man, who is originally from Almoradí, because he is ill and needs constant dialysis treatment. The location of the couple’s five-month hiding place is unknown.

First, a sister of the administrator of Abadix Fruits of El Campello, who owns 2% of this fruit import and export business, was taken into custody by the police in the province of Toledo last October. With the help of attorney Galiana Botella, the Public Prosecutor’s Office asked for this woman to be imprisoned; though the court granted her temporary freedom.

The couple and their company, along with other individuals and businesses, were under investigation since the middle of last year for their relationship with an international drug trafficking organisation that imported cocaine containers, for which Inspector Óscar Sánchez Gil, the former head of the UDEF in Madrid, was imprisoned after being arrested with his wife, also a national police officer, allegedly worked. The Algeciras court that opened the proceedings following the discovery of the nation’s largest cocaine haul ultimately abstained in favour of the central court of instruction number 1 of the National Court.

According to the National Police’s Internal Affairs department’s investigation, this police commander concealed about 20 million euros in cash between his Madrid home and a villa he purchased and refurbished in Dénia. The purchase was purportedly funded by funds given to him by the drug ring in return for the protection he gave the organisation.

In order to determine whether containers and businesses connected to the drug trafficking organisation were the focus of other police investigations and to notify the criminal organization’s leaders, investigators have found that the former head of UDEF allegedly opened investigations where he entered data on them. Since the El Campello couple was not there when the search was initiated the police thought that they might have received a tip and hurried out of their villa.