Spanish Police Officers Arrested in Asturias Over Drug Case Linked to ‘El Panameño’ Murder

In April, we wrote about the killing of known drug trafficker Emiliano "El Panameño" Bruke, and how his killing implicated members of Spain's National Police. Two active duty officers were recently arrested in Asturias for drug trafficking in a case directly linked to the killing of El Panameño. 

Killer cops for hire?

The arrests were made on the 14th of October by Internal Affairs officers who traveled from Madrid, given the suspicion that entire divisions within certain police ranks may be compromised by drug traffickers. 

The two officers, who have not been named and are being held under secrecy laws, refused to say anything during interrogation, with the explicit fear that they may be assasinated on the inside if they talk. 

The case has renewed fears about the power of organised crime groups to recruit law enforcement insiders, gain access to confidential information and potentially compromise investigations into drug trafficking and contract killings.

Figures attributed to Spain’s Interior Ministry indicate that more than 100 members of the country’s State Security Forces and Corps were arrested or investigated over drug-trafficking-related offences in recent years. 

In Asturias, the October investigation revolves around cocaine trafficking and money laundering. The alleged offences also include membership of a criminal organisation and disclosure of confidential information. A court ordered both officers and a third suspect into provisional detention without bail.

Spanish media have reported possible links between some suspects in the investigation and the criminal network suspected of involvement in Bruke’s murder. Authorities have not publicly established that either officer helped arrange the killing or provided information used to track the victim.

Bruke was shot dead in Lugo de Llanera in January 2025. Investigators believe the killing was ordered over a cocaine debt. A tracking device was found on his vehicle, and investigators suspect that people close to him helped the perpetrators monitor his movements.

Five suspects were arrested in Spain and France in March 2026 in connection with the murder. The investigation raised questions about how the criminal network obtained information about Bruke’s movements and whether anyone outside the organisation assisted its surveillance operation.

A separate case in Barcelona has also drawn attention to the reach of international criminal networks. Krsto Vujić, a Montenegrin underworld figure known as “The Terminator,” was shot while dining with his partner and child. He had been linked by Balkan authorities to cocaine trafficking and violent feuds between rival criminal clans.

There is no publicly established evidence linking Spanish police officers to Vujić’s killing, but we have received reports that members of the Guardia Civil have links to that killing.

For the police, the damage caused by such cases extends beyond the individuals under investigation. Officers are tasked with dismantling trafficking networks, gathering intelligence and protecting witnesses. When serving officers are suspected of working with criminal organisations, questions inevitably arise about the security of investigations and the reliability of information held by law enforcement.

The Asturias case has yet to establish the full extent of any alleged police involvement. But if investigators confirm that officers supplied confidential information or helped protect trafficking operations, the consequences could reach beyond individual prosecutions.

The central question is whether criminal groups have exploited isolated individuals or established deeper connections within parts of the police force. The answer will depend on evidence produced by the ongoing investigations. Until then, the arrests remain allegations under investigation, not proof that the institution as a whole is corrupt.

Spanish Narcobank Investigation Reaches Borbón Family

Alejandro Salgado Vega, better known as “El Tigre,” is the elusive figure at the center of a Spanish narcotics investigation that has steadily expanded from cocaine trafficking into police corruption, international finance and, ultimately, the orbit of the Borbón family. This week, Spanish authorities exposed another piece of that puzzle: an alleged underground bank operating from Dubai that investigators say moved and concealed the proceeds of some of Europe’s most powerful drug-trafficking organizations.

The operation, five years in the making, resulted in 21 arrests -- 14 in Spain and seven across the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, the Netherlands and Sweden -- as well as 19 international arrest warrants. Investigators say they have identified or frozen roughly €20 million in assets, including 121 bank accounts containing more than €2.3 million and 48 properties worth more than €14 million. Police also seized €39,000 in cash, luxury vehicles, watches and jewelry. The scale of the seizures offers a glimpse into an illicit financial system designed to operate beyond the reach of conventional banks, moving drug proceeds between countries while disguising their origin.

Among those arrested were three men investigators describe as senior figures in the network. Carlos Humberto Arango Castaño, known by the nicknames “Burger King” and “Poker Face,” is alleged to have served as El Tigre’s Colombian connection. Jonas Sture Falk, a Swedish trafficker dubbed by investigators the “Pablo Escobar of Sweden,” was also detained, as was Perikles David Daremas, known as “Spartan,” whom authorities describe as a central figure in the financial side of the operation. The fourth alleged leader is El Tigre himself. He remains a fugitive, and his continued absence has made him a recurring figure in the investigation as Spanish authorities attempt to reconstruct the network around him. There are fears that the reason why he hasn't been captured is because he's being protected, as his capture could lead to the arrest of many members of Spain's elite.

The story began with cocaine, not banking. In February 2021, Spanish authorities intercepted the Nehir off the northern Spanish coast carrying 1,835 kilograms of cocaine. The vessel was being towed toward Gijón when it sank, taking its cargo with it. Investigators later recovered another 1,650 kilograms from the wreck, bringing the total connected to the operation to more than 3.4 tons. What initially appeared to be another major maritime drug seizure ultimately opened a window into the financial infrastructure supporting the trade. Investigators traced cryptocurrency transactions associated with the shipment and began following the money beyond the cocaine itself.

That trail eventually collided directly with the investigation surrounding El Tigre and Ignacio Torán, a Madrid businessman whom Spanish authorities identify as a leading figure in a major narco clan. It also led investigators to Óscar Sánchez Gil, the former head of Madrid’s economic-crime unit. Sánchez is accused of using his position inside Spain’s police force to protect traffickers and provide them with information. When investigators searched his home, they found more than €20 million in cash, some of it hidden inside the walls. Spanish authorities have alleged that the organization was responsible for facilitating enormous cocaine shipments into Spain, including a 13-ton seizure at the port of Algeciras in which the cocaine was concealed in a shipment of fruit.

Who's protecting them?

Then, in February 2026, the investigation produced one of its most politically and socially sensitive developments. Spanish authorities arrested Francisco de Borbón von Hardenberg, a relative of former King Juan Carlos I, in connection with the alleged money-laundering network. He remains under investigation and completely silent about how the Spanish royal household itself is implicated in the case.

Investigators alleged that Francisco de Borbón was connected to several financial entities operating across jurisdictions and under scrutiny for their potential role in moving funds associated with the wider investigation. The web included financial companies in São Tomé and Príncipe, an Ireland-based fintech operation, and other entities involved in trading and digital assets. The significance of the allegation was not simply the presence of a prominent surname. It was that the investigation into a cocaine-trafficking organization had followed the proceeds into an international financial network populated by companies, cryptocurrencies, and offshore entities.

The latest Dubai operation adds another layer to that picture. Rather than treating cocaine trafficking as a series of isolated shipments, investigators are increasingly examining the machinery that allows the profits to survive long after the drugs have crossed the border. A shipment can arrive in Spain, its proceeds can be converted into cash or cryptocurrency, and those funds can then travel through a web of intermediaries far removed from the original crime. By the time they reach a property, bank account, financial company, or royal vault, their connection to a container of cocaine may be deliberately obscured.

That is what makes El Tigre such a central figure. His alleged role sits at the center between the physical trafficking of cocaine and the financial machinery built to monetize it. Around him are alleged traffickers, international financiers, cryptocurrency operators and, according to Spanish investigators, a police official who was supposed to be fighting organized crime rather than protecting it.

The February arrest demonstrated how far the investigation had already reached. The Dubai Bank operation suggests that the money trail is still expanding.

And for Spanish investigators, the ultimate question may be the simplest one: how far can the proceeds of Europe's cocaine trade travel before they cease to look like drug money, and who is willing to help them get there?

A Death by Decree: The Secret Military Tribunal Behind the Death of a Catalan Separatist

A year since the death of Víctor Terradellas Maré, one of Catalonia's most ardent independence advocates, a Norwegian government scientist has reached out to Abreu Report to claim that his death bears all the hallmarks of a directed energy weapon assassination.

The scientist, a Norwegian government professor specializing in directed-energy weapons whose identity is being withheld by Abreu Report for his own safety, believes Terradellas was exposed to a powerful microwave device designed to induce a stroke while avoiding an immediate death that might trigger a forensic investigation.

“The weapon is not designed to kill instantly, since this would likely result in an autopsy, but instead is meant to kill days after the target has been hospitalized and doctors can be persuaded to declared the death as a stroke,” the scientist said.

The scientist's contact with us prompted us to launch an investigation into Terradellas's death and his political activities. That reporting produced a separate allegation from a source in Spanish intelligence, who said Terradellas had been designated an enemy combatant and subjected to a clandestine military tribunal at the behest of Spain's King Felipe.

According to the intelligence source, the tribunal acted in absentia and convicted Terradellas of treason against Madrid. The alleged grounds for that conviction included his contacts with Israel and Russia and his purported involvement in plans to establish a Catalan army operating parallel to Spain's armed forces.

Terradellas had maintained contacts with Russian figures and promoted closer relations between Catalonia and Israel. Previous reporting has documented those activities, although the extent to which they represented official Catalan policy remains disputed.

The weapon fits in a camera?

If Terradellas was formally designated an enemy combatant, the legal implications would be substantially different from those of an ordinary criminal prosecution. The designation would raise questions about whether Spanish authorities considered him subject to a military rather than civilian legal regime.

A historical comparison is the U.S. Supreme Court's 1942 decision Ex parte Quirin, involving eight German saboteurs captured during World War II, including Hans Herbert Haupt. The Court upheld the jurisdiction of a military commission over unlawful enemy combatants accused of offenses against the laws of war.

The decision subsequently became part of the legal history surrounding American treatment of enemy combatants. Decades later, the U.S. government developed counterterrorism policies authorizing targeted lethal force against certain individuals regarded as enemy combatants or members of hostile organizations. The Obama regime defended such operations through a combination of the law of armed conflict, congressional authorizations, and presidential war powers.

The allegations therefore present two extraordinary possibilities: that Terradellas was deliberately targeted with a directed-energy weapon, and that his death followed a secret military process in which he had already been designated an enemy combatant and convicted of treason.

The allegations concerning Terradellas ultimately present a question that is less dramatic in legal form than it may appear in political terms: whether Spanish authorities had determined, through whatever process was deemed applicable, that he was no longer to be treated solely as a civilian political actor but as an individual subject to measures ordinarily reserved for an enemy. If such a determination existed, the subsequent use of force would not necessarily have been viewed by its authors as an assassination, but as the implementation of an existing legal and operational determination, subject to whatever findings, authorizations, and safeguards the responsible officials considered sufficient. The alleged military tribunal, his reported designation as an enemy combatant, his contacts abroad, and the claims concerning a Catalan military organization would, in that framework, become less a collection of extraordinary circumstances than elements in an internal assessment of threat and authority. 

If a government can convert a political separatist into an enemy through a process unavailable to public scrutiny, the decisive act may occur not when the weapon is deployed, but earlier, when someone determines -- quietly, administratively, and with sufficient confidence -- that ordinary law no longer applies.

Five Spanish Police Officers Died in a Crash. But Where Were They Really Going; and What Does the Royal Family Have to Do With It?

Five senior officers with Navarra’s regional police force were killed June 3 when their police van slammed into a tanker on the AP-8 near Elgoibar, in Spain’s Basque Country. They were reportedly headed for Iurreta, where authorities said they were due to meet with the Ertzaintza, the Basque regional police, for training and equipment testing.

The officers were Fermín Sola Barrena, head of Navarra’s Intervention Division; Jesús María Vidaurreta Fernández, commander of an operational intervention group; Miguel Crespo Obanos and Miguel Antonio D’Entremont Jiménez, members of the force’s specialized GIE tactical unit; and Juan Martín Domínguez Villar, who worked in operational support.

These were seasoned police officers who had spent years handling the kind of work that most cops never see: dangerous arrests, tactical interventions, protection assignments and operations involving armed suspects.

King Felipe VI offered condolences after the crash, as did senior Spanish officials and police commanders.

The account given by authorities is that the officers were on their way to Iurreta for a professional session with the Ertzaintza when the crash happened. The Basque police have publicly described joint training involving Policía Foral and their specialist units.

But sources who say they knew about the officers’ assignment tell a different story.

They say Iurreta was a cover destination and that the five were actually working a surveillance assignment involving a member of Spain’s royal family. According to these sources, the officers were investigating the royal, rather than heading to a training session.

That is a serious claim, but there is Francisco de Borbón von Hardenberg.

In February, the aristocrat and distant relative of Spain’s royal family was arrested in an investigation into alleged money laundering connected to a major drug-trafficking organization. Spanish investigators accused the network of moving the proceeds of drug trafficking and also implicated a former senior police officer. De Borbón was later released on €50,000 bail.

Mystery suits wearing sunglasses on a cloudy day.

Sources bring up some troubling questions. Did the royal family have 5 officers killed and made it look like an accident? The driver of the tanker that caused their deaths survived, and what makes this entire affair more troubling is his connection to Spain's intelligence services. The government, of course, refuses to publicly reveal his identity. 

Imagine that, someone kills 5 police officers and gets to maintain anonimity. Unsual, highly unusual. 

If the officers were going to Iurreta, there should be a paper trail: the meeting, the people waiting for them, the equipment they were supposed to test. If they were headed somewhere else, there should be a trail for that, too... deployment orders, radio traffic, vehicle records, court documents or witnesses who knew what was going on.

How could the truck driver be the only one to survive?

Five highly trained officers set out that morning.

They never reached their stated destination.

For now, the public knows how they died.

It does not know with certainty where they were going.