The Court of Pontevedra has condemned 11 years in prison and two fines of 300 million from euros to the three crew members of the narco-submarine that arrived in Spain from Brazil, sunk in November 2019 on a beach in the municipality of Aldán, Vigués Agustin Alvarez Martinez, and the two Ecuadorians Luis Tomas Benitez Manzaba Y Pedro Roberto Delgado Manzaba, as authors of a crime against public health in the modality of drug trafficking in attention to the amount of drug and use of a boat. On the other hand, the ruling condemns the other participants in this operation, the Vigo Iago Serantes Perez, to 9 years in prison and two fines of 200 million euros; and those also domiciled in Vigo, Iago Rego Rosende Y Enrique Carlos Serantes Giraldez already Rodrigo Hermida Movilla, native of Santiago; sentenced to 7 years in prison and two fines of 200 million.
In total they are 63 years in prison for the 7 involved in the operation and 3,400 million in fines. For the two Ecuadorian citizens, the ruling sets the time for effective serving of the prison sentence at eight years and serving the rest is replaced by expulsion from the national territory to which they will not be able to return within 10 years.
The Court considers proven facts that the three crew members -the one from Vigo, who piloted the boat, and the two Ecuadorians- acted at the service of an international criminal structure that supplied narcotics for transport by sea from Brazil to Spain from a shipment of cocaine through the use of a semi-submersible vessel whose crew they were part of and from which they had to transport the drug. Said cargo, the sentence maintains, transported on the boat were about 152 bales containing 3,030 packages of cocaine with a net weight of 3,047.900 kilos and a purity of 80.35%, in addition to another bundle of 20 packages, also of cocaine, with a net weight of 20.148 kilos and a purity of 79.32%. in this way they turned out 3,068.55 kilos of cocaine with a market value of 123,244,573 euros for which it was intended.
The prosecutor had requested in the trial held in mid-December last, the sentence of 12 years in prison and two fines of 300 million euros for the three crew members and 9 years and six months in prison for Iago Serantes and two fines of 200 million of euros; and 7 years and six months in prison for the rest together with the same cash penalty of 200 million euros.
The Court imposes the sentence of 11 years in prison on the three crew members because it considers that all of them participated equally in the embarkation and voyage of the ship full of cocaine to the Galician coast. In the case of Iago Serantes, with 9 years in prison, for his active intervention and greater degree of involvement in the events, among the four defendants who did not travel on the boat. While for Iago Rego Rosende (7 years old) considers that his participation was not as active, persistent and continuous as that of the previous defendant, without also forgetting that he was in charge of erasing any vestige of his mobile phone. In the case of Enrique Carlos Serantes (father of Iago Serantes) he considers that his participation was almost always at the request and initiative of his son, but that, with evident interest, he always lent himself to what he indicated and carried out his commissions. With respect to Rodrigo Hermida (person who waited at night in the car on the beach of O Foxo for the arrival of the narco-submarine), the ruling considers that his participation was active and effective in the events and he was going, at least, to receive and assist the disembarkation of the crew members of the vessel, in a planned manner with the aim of impunity for the crew members.