A group specialized in Madrid of the Customs Surveillance Service (SVA), the body attached to the State Tax Administration Agency (AEAT) that is responsible for fighting smuggling or drug trafficking, has stopped number two of this service in Catalonia, Francisco Javier Martín Miñana, as Eldiario.es has confirmed
“We have stopped it, but it is still under summary secret,” confirmed a spokesman for the AEAT on Friday to questions about this matter. Legal sources cited by EFE have specified that the investigation is in a court in Barcelona and is related to smuggling.
Career official of the Superior Technical Corps of the Customs Surveillance Service, research specialty and with an A1 level on the official scale, Martín Miñana has already been made available. It is still today the head of the Regional Operational Customs Surveillance Unit of the AEAT in Catalonia.
This SVA command headed its last days in this body. He planned to retire on July 9, they say internal sources of the agency. The number two of the SVA is considered, only behind the attached boss of the regional customs agency and special taxes in Catalonia of the Customs Surveillance Area, Carlos Daniel Gavilanes.
Last year, Martín Miñana was in charge of giving an account with the Mossos d
The operation resulted in the arrest of 40 network members and the apprehension of more than 100 kg of cocaine with an illicit market of about 6 million euros, as well as large amounts of other drugs, 161,900 euros in cash, a gold bullion and six firearms.
The arrest of Miñana arrives months after in 2024 another command of the SVA in Catalunya, Manuel Corardoira, a head of the Superior Body of Customs Surveillance in Barcelona, was also sent to preventive prison, for appropriating drugs that the agency had previously seized in the port of the Catalan capital. The case of Corardoira, waiting for trial, “has nothing to do” with the arrest of Miñana, says the AEAT, which declines to give more details about this matter.
Key department
The SVA is one of the most important departments of the AEAT, fundamental in the fight against organized mafias, the money laundering, drug trafficking and corruption.
This department has been involved in recent years in some controversies: the use of obsolete software for listening to drug traffickers and frauds to the millionaire purchase of its star patrol, the condor, which has given problems since its launch in 2021 and that these days is immobilized in Cádiz for new technical deficiencies, which has left the SVA with a single patrolman to combat drug trafficking in Canary Islands.
The SVA handles highly sensitive information on many fiscal investigations that end in the criminal process. Among its main responsible for more than 22 years is Manuel Montesinos Diez de la Lastra, Deputy Director General of Operations of the Department of Customs and Special Taxes of the Tax Agency since 2003 and with a special link with the PP.
The Montesinos case is exceptional in the agency. He has survived the changes in the dome of the department to which he belongs. None of the organism’s trust positions, directed since 2022 by Soledad Fernández Doctor, has been in the position like him for as many years.
Nieto of the former Francoist of Alicante of Alicante of the same name between 1946 and 1949, Montesinos is the son of the deceased Maribel Diez de la Lastra Barbadillo, one of the founders of the Popular Alliance of Manuel Fraga and deputy of the PP from 1996 to 2004. His uncle, Juan Antonio Montesinos García, was also founder and vice president of AP (1979-19-1984), in addition to national deputy, among other positions. And her cousin is Macaren Montesinos, deputy of the PP by Alicante and general secretary of the Popular Parliamentary Group in Congress.
Source: www.eldiario.es
