The surprising accusation of the anti-narcotics chief of the 60 medals at the age of 45

The accusation of Lieutenant Colonel David Oliva, a key figure in the fight against drug trafficking in the Campo de Gibraltar, shocked a large sector of the Civil Guard last Wednesday, who digested it with disbelief. The complaint from the Internal Affairs Service – to which the National Court has reviewed – keeps him under investigation for revealing secrets and bribery because, supposedly, when he was leading the elite unit against drug trafficking in the area, he asked a lieutenant if you were being investigated for attending a drug dealer's party. In exchange for obtaining data, Oliva could have guaranteed a position to this cash, according to the investigations.

In full inflammation of the news, colleagues from the Armed Institute of all levels and those who were their subordinates combat the basis of these proceedings and warn that the germ may come from an attempt by the drug traffickers to discredit their work; a revenge for the four years in which Oliva and his team complicated the frenetic activity of these organizations. The same sources clarify that in the event of attending that meeting it was as an infiltrator to obtain information – a hypothesis that gains more strength after the first investigations – and they insist that if the lieutenant colonel asked, it was because several informers informed them that agents from Madrid were taking an interest in his work and that of his men. “They told us that from time to time a team from Madrid would travel here and that they would interrogate them and people that we had detained.. They were asked about him (the lieutenant colonel) and about the members of the team. He was surprised and interested. Just, there is no more”.

These interrogations, they continue, coincided with the time when David Oliva's department pulverized the statistics in arrests and seizures of stashes, when he received all kinds of distinctions. In fact, the Ministry of the Interior awarded him in 2021 with the Medal of Merit for the National Plan on Drugs. At just 45 years old, he has accumulated more than 60 medals and has no blemish on his record. “That he could become a general from scratch, from Andalusia, and without having gone through the groups considered a star aroused internal jealousy and envy,” say Civil Guard sources. “He has earned a multitude of enemies both inside and outside the Corps for doing his job well,” they settle.

The context of this story must be found in 2018 when the South Drug Coordination Agency (OCON) was created, an elite unit made up of 130 agents chosen by Oliva and specialized in the fight against drug trafficking and related activities. to it as money laundering, organized crime and corruption. It was the first detachment “in conditions” that was born to comprehensively face the serious problem of drug trafficking that plagues the Campo de Gibraltar, which was in an untenable situation. To direct the unit, the General Directorate of the Civil Guard specifically sought Oliva, then head of the Judicial Police of Malaga. In four years, the lieutenant colonel obtained record figures as the highest operational chief. The drug traffickers feared him, kept watch on him and when, against all odds, the Government decided to dismantle the OCON-Sur last September, they celebrated their march as shown by the WhatsApp to which EL MUNDO has had access.. “I still did a lot of damage here in the town (…) Captain David [sic] says,” writes a member of one of the clans. “Kids from aller occon sur begin to disappear,” celebrates another.

The lieutenant colonel has spent his entire professional career measuring himself against drug trafficking in Andalusia and his deep knowledge of the basements of these organizations made him the perfect candidate.. It was he who diagnosed the Achilles heel of these groups in the Gibraltar countryside when he resolved that what hurt them the most is not that their stashes were intervened but that their assets were touched; Take away their houses, their cars and their money.”. He carried out an accurate analysis of a criminal universe far from any similarity with another part of the country, trained his team and deployed a new work model.

“He warned that he wanted people who wanted to work and warned that there would be excess hours,” recalls another of the agents.. In OCON-Sur the days were 15 hours a day. “The boss had no schedule. We've gotten to sleep together in a car waiting for a stash. Logically, he could have been seen with a drug trafficker because they were the ones looking for him to give him information.. Anyone knows that this occurs in all special groups ». «He has always been a low-profile guard that circumstances have made stand out. All the drug traffickers knew him and feared him.”