David Oliva: A WhatsApp conversation revealed the former head of the Civil Guard in the fight against drug trafficking investigated at the National Court | Spain

The exchange of messages through the WhatsApp application revealed the alleged pressure on a subordinate that led to the accusation of Lieutenant Colonel of the Civil Guard David Oliva Moreno, who until a few months ago was the head of the Operations Coordination Body against the Drug trafficking (OCON) Sur, as confirmed to EL PAÍS by sources close to the investigation. Oliva’s messages – which he testifies this Wednesday before the judge of the National Court Alejandro Abascal, accused of the crimes of disclosure of secret and bribery – supposedly show how the command of the armed institute tried to obtain the confidentiality of the other agent to find out if he was Being investigated in an operation of the Internal Affairs Service (SAI) for the alleged involvement of civil guards in drug trafficking activities in Campo de Gibraltar.

Always according to these sources, the investigation into the lieutenant colonel began a little over a year ago after those responsible for Internal Affairs asked Judge Abascal for judicial authorization to tap the mobile phone of a lieutenant from his own unit, on suspicion of who could be providing information about the operation to third parties. The analysis of the terminal of this agent, who also testified as a defendant this Tuesday before Judge Abascal, revealed the existence of a chain of messages between him and the then head of OCON, an elite unit made up of 150 agents that was created by the Ministry of the Interior in 2018 to combat the legacy of drug shipments to the Andalusian coast.

In these messages, the person who has been in charge of the fight against drug trafficking in the Strait in the last four years, pressured his subordinate to confirm or deny whether, as he suspected, he was one of the agents being investigated for Internal Affairs. According to the sources consulted, the high command had attended the party of a known drug trafficker in the area and feared that for this fact he would be the subject of investigations. To overcome the lieutenant’s resistance to providing him with the information, Oliva promised to make him a place in the OCON with the incentive that the agent was originally from this area of ​​Andalusia and could be closer to the family. In this exchange of messages there were also references to a third agent, a lieutenant who was also assigned to the elite anti-drug unit at the time and is currently in Ceuta. This command has also been charged and has declared in the National Court.

According to the sources consulted, the fears of Lieutenant Colonel Oliva that they were being investigated, and that they caused the alleged pressure on his subordinates, were “unfounded.” The investigation into the alleged involvement of civil guards in drug trafficking that Judge Abascal instructed, and which is still open, never had the former head of OCON among its objectives. These same sources detail that Internal Affairs never suspected Oliva for his attendance at parties in which traffickers from the area participated, since, they add, they believed that it was part of his job to obtain information.

In fact, all the consulted sources praise the work of this unit in the four years that it has been operational and that the Interior restructured by surprise last September, in a decision for which no explanations have ever been provided. In fact, their investigations have led to the arrest of the big hashish drug traffickers on the southern coast of Spain, in addition to a spectacular increase in seized caches, which have tripled since the creation of OCON.

The results are recognized by the Minister of the Interior himself, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, who in June 2021 awarded the then-Commander Oliva with the National Drug Plan merit medal, who was later promoted to lieutenant colonel. After the restructuring of the group, which broke up into the different commanderies in the area, the command was assigned to the Malaga Commander, where he currently remains.