The Second Section of the Provincial Court of Granada has scheduled for this Monday the start of the trial of the case in which the Prosecutor’s Office has requested sentences of 14 years in prison for a Spanish citizen and another Russian whom it places at the top of an organization accused of activating “the installation, start-up and operation of an illegal tobacco factory located in the Alhameña district of Pilas de Algaida”, specifically in Ventas de Zafarraya. There are eleven other defendants who face requests for between six and eleven years in prison.
According to the provisional conclusions of the Prosecutor’s Office, to which Europa Press has had access, these ten Spaniards, along with the Russian citizen, and two others of Ukrainian and South African nationality, would have agreed in 2017 to carry out their operations. between the Axarquía of Málaga and the Poniente of Granada in order to “obtain illicit economic benefits” with the aforementioned smuggled tobacco factory, inside a warehouse that they had passed off as agricultural next to the A-402 highway.
They are accused of allegedly committing crimes of belonging to a criminal organization and smuggling, and against workers’ rights. The two defendants considered leaders of the gang also face a request from the Prosecutor’s Office to pay fines of more than four million euros. The rest, if convicted, would have to pay amounts ranging from around 1.5 to more than three million euros.
The criminal organization would have functioned according to hierarchical criteria, with the tasks “perfectly distributed”, which would only have ceased once the judicial entry and registration of December 5, 2017 occurred. At the top there was a third individual who has not been been located.
The Russian citizen and his lieutenant, the defendant of Ukrainian nationality, allegedly had previous experience in tobacco production in Eastern Europe, details the prosecutor. Precisely from Ukraine were the majority of workers of foreign origin without permission, who would have moved to produce cigarettes that were later distributed under the commercial name J5, in a commercial activity that was not declared or subject to taxes.
They would have come to work from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. “with just a 20-minute break to eat a sandwich that was provided to them and all this in exchange for amounts that ranged between 500 and 700 euros per month that were not “it is clear that it would have been paid in any case”.
On December 5, in parallel, there were also judicial entry and searches in a warehouse in Chauchina, “numerous equipment, machinery, vehicles, packaging and tobacco in different forms were seized.” A total of 37 boxes of cigarettes and 132 containing thousands of cigarette packs, among other material, were seized on the ship.
The market valuation of the seized merchandise amounted to more than 1.1 million euros, multiplying “by 75.87 times that which delimits the crime of mere administrative infraction,” the public ministry detailed in its provisional conclusions.
2024-01-14 23:59:08
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