Sentences reduced for transporting drugs with street value of 105million euros to a house on the Costa

The high court of justice of Andalucía (TSJA) has reduced to six years and nine months in prison the sentence initially imposed by the courts in Malaga on four men for moving three tonnes of cocaine from a warehouse to a house in Estepona, thus matching the sentence already handed down to a fifth defendant.The Malaga court sentenced four defendants to nine years and nine months in prison and one to six years and nine months, having found it proven that in December 2017 they stored a total of 3,015,000 grams of cocaine in a warehouse - owned by a company that had rented it to the accused - and in a house in Estepona that had been rented to one of them, the defendant who received the lesser sentence.Of that amount, some1,163,000 grams were in a vehicle owned by another company, which had rented it to the same defendant and which he was driving at the moment he was arrested by the Guardia Civil, after having loaded it, together with the other defendants, with part of the drugs that were found.The street market value of the drugs is around 105 million euros and the operation also involved the seizure of two vehicles used to transport the drugs. For these acts, they were convicted of an offence of drug trafficking involving substances that cause serious harm, in a quantity of notable significance and extreme gravity.However, the TSJA partially upheld the appeal lodged by the defence and modified the proven facts to declare that the defendants met in Estepona with a person who has not been arrested and arranged to unload the cocaine that was to arrive that same day, inside the container transported by a lorry to a warehouse in that town.Once there, four defendants unloaded the 71 bundles of drugs from the truck and put them in a van, rented by the fifth, who was "in charge of moving them to the house he had rented". He then returned to the warehouse to load the other 33 bundles, which he was going to move to the same place, but was arrested on the way.According to the Andalusian high court, "It is illogical that with respect to one of the accused, the sentence was only increased by one degree, despite the fact that he played a much more significant role in the events, given that he held meetings with the mastermind of the operation - who is currently at large - and was responsible for transporting the substance and storing it in the property he had rented.”The court said that “this difference in treatment” stems from the public prosecutor’s final classification, and it considers it “logical” that the same penalty that would apply to the organisers of the shipment or to its intended recipients should not be imposed on those who play “a secondary role”, as is the case here, given that “the appellants’ involvement was limited to transferring the drugs, inside the warehouse, from the lorry to the van".According to the sentence, the defendants had "no other role in the development of the operation, either before or after", which led the court to uphold this point of the appeal and proceed to impose a sentence of six years and nine months in prison on all of them, and the payment of a a large fine.