“Operacion Emperador” was an investigation into money laundering that ended up with the arrest of Gao Ping, a Chinese man resident in Madrid, on charges of laundering billions of dollars via Spain.
Justice followed its natural course, Mr Gao was allowed out for a walk one day and promptly vanished on the first flight back to Beijing, and no more was said. Can’t annoy the Chinese, you know.
Anyway, Anticorruption has suddenly relaunched the case, this time going after the coppers who allowed Ping to move people and money around the world as he liked.
10 coppers have been indicted on corruption charges, four of them senior officials, including the Head of Madrid airport Adolfo Suárez-Barajas airport security.
Another is the Commissionaire in charge of doling out residencias to guiris in Madrid, and the number 3 officer in charge of citizen safety of the city of Madrid.
The chap in charge of the residencias, one Miguel Ángel, was apparently amiable to personally printing out residency and work permits and taking them round personally to Mr Gao, in exchange for the occasional suitcase full of case. Allegedly. Geo had him on speed dial as Miguel el calvo. (Bald Miguel).
And the traffic cop involved in the case would make speeding fines and the like vanish off the computer. Yongping Wu Liu, the wife of Gao Ping, had him fix the fine she got for driving at 170 kph on the motorway outside of Elche, saving herself 400 euros and 4 points on the license. In exchange, the copper got a brand new laptop.
It turns out that the Judge in charge has a load of bugged telephone calls.
Seven National Police agents, two local police from Fuenlebrada (Madrid) and a Guardia Civil (traffic department) agents have all been called up before the beak to testify in the case.
More here, if you’re interested.