The Director General of the Civil Guard, Joan Mesquida, presented the new ECO this Thursday in Las Palmas, a special team against organized crime that, newly created, will mean that 13 agents in the province of Tenerife and 12 in the province of Las Palmas will begin work exclusively focused on what is defined as organized crime. According to INTERPOL, there must be crime committed by three or more people, with continuity in their actions, serious crimes with violence and intimidation, and characteristics of a hierarchical group, with strong internal discipline.
According to that definition, in the Canary Islands in 2005, five organized groups were detected, of which three were completely dismantled and the remaining two were only partially dismantled, arresting 37 people out of the 40 detected, all for crimes such as drug trafficking, money laundering, illegal immigration, fraud and forgery, and crimes against industrial property.
In 2006, five organizations have been detected again in the Islands, and three of them have already been eliminated, which has led to the arrest of 103 out of 117 criminals involved. The crimes of these gangs in 2006 are practically all focused on drug trafficking and money laundering.
The Civil Guard's ECO will be a specialized group with autonomy to investigate, and Mesquida explained that it will relieve the judicial police teams of the Civil Guard of work. Its function will be the same as that of the Greco, the National Police's 'anti-mafia' operation that has also been announced to be launched soon in the Archipelago.
The islands, especially due to their tourist areas, are more likely to host the activity of mafias, which take advantage of the ease of movement between so many tourists and the economic bustle in those areas. Mesquida, however, explained today that the unit is not created to "worry" citizens that there are many groups operating here, but to "reassure" and make it clear that action is taken against the few organizations that operate in the Islands.
In fact, Mesquida did not hide that the Civil Guard establishes five different categories of risk of presence of criminal organizations. In the case of the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the risk is "low", while in that of Las Palmas it is considered that the risk is "medium".
The 25 ECO agents, who obviously did not pose before the cameras and carry out their work in much of the time incognito, are trained in the investigation of money laundering and technological crimes, with which they will have top-level computer resources, their managers said today. Despite being distributed by the two provinces, the units will be mobile, to the point that one day the 25 could participate together in an operation on any of the seven islands.
The Canary Islands are now added to the ECOs that are currently already in operation in the Commands of Alicante, with action in the Levante and Murcia area, Malaga, with an area of action in the rest of the southern strip of the Mediterranean Arc, the Balearic Islands and Pontevedra.
ACN Press
