Sito Miñanco denies cocaine smuggling charges

In the first day of the trial of Jose Ramón Prado Bugallo, known as "Sito Miñanco," he roundly denied that he was guilty of drug trafficking and described the accusation as "sounding like Chinese." The prosecution is asking for a 20 year jail sentence and a fine of €750 million if Sito Miñanco is found guilty of trying to smuggle the five tonnes of cocaine which were seized off the coast of Spain in August 2001. Sito Miñanco and fourteen others have been detained since they were arrested on the 16th August 2001.

According to the prosecution, the organisation was divided into two groups, one in Spain and another in Colombia linked to the Medellin cartel. Representatives from both groups met with an undercover agent from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and asked him to "take charge of transporting a large amount of cocaine to Spain from Colombia."

In his statement to the court today, Sito Miñanco denied that he was responsible for organising the transport of the cocaine, and that he had only gone to Madrid to give some money to a friend of his, Luis Enrique Garcia Arango, who is one of the other defendants in the trial. Sito Miñanco stated that Garcia Arango had phoned him to ask if he could lend him ten million pesetas (€60,000) to set up a legal business, and as he had a week's vacation, decided to go to Madrid to give him five million.

Sito Miñanco completely denies any knowledge of, or involvement with Colombian drug traffickers. When asked to explain what he was doing in the chalet in Villaviciosa de Odón, where he was arrested, and from where, the prosecution maintains, the transfer of the cocaine from the "Agios Konstandinos" to the "Tatiana," 1,000 miles off the coast of French Guiana, was supervised, Sito Miñanco explained that he was there because the owner, Luis Fernando Restrepo, who is also one of the defendants in the trial, was throwing a party and had invited some Colombian girls.