Described as discreet and hard-working, Oscar Sanchez Gil was until recently head of the anti-fraud and money-laundering section of Spain’s National Police in Madrid.

Officers arrested him last week along with 15 other people, including his romantic partner, who is also a police officer in the Madrid region, a police source told AFP on condition of anonymity.

During the raid, police found 20 million euros ($21 million) in cash hidden in the walls and ceilings of the couple’s home in Alcala de Henares, a city of about 195,000 located about 30 kilometers (18 miles) east of the capital of Spain.

Officers also discovered one million euros in his office, hidden in two locked cabinets, in bills from 50 to 500 euros, according to the police source.

The couple were charged with drug trafficking, money laundering, corruption and membership of a criminal organization after they appeared before a Madrid court last week, which remanded them in custody, a judicial source told AFP.

Spanish media said the arrests were linked to the seizure last month of 13 tons of cocaine that arrived at the southern port of Algeciras from Ecuador’s largest city Guayaquil — a drug-trafficking hub — hidden among banana crates.

Police said the drug haul — which they only announced last week — was Spain’s biggest cocaine haul and “one of the biggest seizures in the world.”

The container was destined for a Spanish importer based in the southeastern coastal city of Alicante “which for years had received large quantities of fruit imported from Ecuador,” authorities said.

– Comparison with Pablo Escobar –

Police raided several homes and offices in Madrid and Alicante after seizing the cocaine. These operations uncovered links between the importer and Sanchez Gil, according to Spanish media reports.

He was already suspected by his colleagues who intercepted his phone, reported El Mundo daily.

The father-of-three, who is in his 40s and lives in a brick house protected by metal gates, is suspected of having worked for drug traffickers for “at least five years”, a source told the paper.

In those years, he would have provided them with information on the surveillance of containers in Spanish ports, which allowed them to avoid controls, according to a source close to the investigation.

Although his lifestyle was not ostentatious, the large sums of money found in his home led police officers quoted by El Mundo to compare his home “to that of Pablo Escobar”, the notorious Colombian drug lord who was shot by the police in 1993.

A nephew of Escobar once said he found a plastic bag with $18 million worth of money hidden in the wall of one of his uncle’s houses.

Some of the money raised by Sanchez Gil in recent years was laundered through the purchase of cryptocurrencies and a large fleet of private hire vehicles registered in the name of one of his relatives, El Mundo reported.

Spain is the main entry point for drugs into Europe due to its close ties to former Latin American colonies, such as major cocaine producers Colombia and Peru, and its proximity to Morocco, a top producer of cannabis.

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