Colombian Kingpin "Don Carlos" Florentino Fernandez Captured in Spain

"Socalj" for Borderland Beat

The Spanish National Police have arrested one of Spain´s top drugs kingpins who had been involved in smuggling cocaine from Colombia for the last 30 years.

Florentino Fernández, also known as Don Carlos, was captured by police officers as he was having a coffee in a Marbella bar. On his arrest, police officers raided his house where they seized €200,000 in cash and a revolver. In addition, the Spanish authorities have applied to the court to freeze his assets including property valued at €350,000 as those of his associates and bank accounts. The arrest was the culmination of an 18-month police operation that was tracking a shipment of 60kg of cocaine from Colombia hidden in boxes of flowers.

Officers swooped on a suspected lorry as it was leaving an industrial estate on the outskirts of Seville where the drugs were seized and two people arrested. The delivery truck was en route to Malaga for distribution throughout Europe. According to the police statement, Don Carlos was described as “a powerful Spanish drug trafficker,” who had smuggled the drugs from Colombia. There was a vehicle ready with which the group of criminals intended to transport the merchandise to its final buyers on the Costa del Sol, hidden in a false bottom of the trunk. Before being able to do so, the two people in charge of the task were arrested.

Don Carlos, who is from the northern autonomous community of Asturias has been on the police´s radar since 1993 when his involvement with high-ranking members of the Medellin and Cali cartels became known. He is believed to have lived for several years in Colombia and his Madrid address belonged to Gilberto Orejuela, one of the founders of the Cali cartel.

He was arrested in 1998 he was sentenced to 24 years in prison for the kidnapping of two women over unpaid debts from a rival gang. Alias The old has occupied the letters of the national press. Time Magazine recorded in 1997 that a “Spanish prisoner” testified against the deceased congressman Horacio Serpa Uribe. The newspaper recorded that Fernández García was allegedly talking about an alleged meeting in which Elizabeth Montoya, the famous “Monita Retrechera”, would have offered former President Ernesto Samper between US$15 million and US$20 million. On behalf of the brothers Miguel and Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela, leaders of the Cali Cartel.

According to the statement filed with the Prosecutor’s Office, the meeting was also presumably attended by members of the Gaitán Cendales clan, who shipped drugs from Colombia to Europe in the 80s and 90s. He would have assured that Serpa knew of the activities of the “Monita Retrechera”, who went down in history as that intermediary who had a conversation with Samper, revealed by the press, which gave rise to the “8,000 Process.”

He was also portrayed as a witness in the trial against the “Iron Prosecutor,” Clemencia García. The then judge was charged in 1999 for allegedly helping the Gaitán Cendales clan with court favors, who have gradually lost property in forfeiture at the request of the Prosecutor’s Office. Ignacio Gaitán Cendales was extradited to Italy in the 1990s. However, the hypothesis against the “Iron Prosecutor” was demolished in 2008, when the Supreme Court acquitted Clemencia García. The Constitutional Court pointed out that “the declaration of Florentino García Fernández not only does not contain the legal formalities, but it is not credible because it does not specify the activity of each of the Gaitán Cendales brothers.”

According to the police press release he returned to criminal activity as soon as he was released from prison. In the fall of 2020, agents learned that Don Carlos intended to import cocaine from South America in large quantities. He is presently in police custody awaiting a court date.

Sources Madrid Metropolitan Kiratas The Times El Espectador