Justice has prosecuted two honorary consuls from Barcelona for their alleged collaboration in the money laundering of the Jodorovich clan. They are the honorary consul of Albania, Josep MarÃa Calmet, and José LuÃs López, representative of Mali. On the other hand, the judge exonerated the former honorary consul of Croatia, Juli Bárcena, because she considers that “it has not been established during the investigation that he carried out acts constituting money laundering or that he knowingly collaborated with the others investigated when they led to end his criminal activity”. This is stated in an interlocutory to which La Vanguardia has had access.
Judge Miriam de Rosa leaves a total of seven people one step away from the trial, who would be part of a network dedicated to laundering funds from drug trafficking. At the center of the plot the judge places the former president of the Federation of Gypsy Associations of Catalonia (Fagic), Simón Montero Jodorovich. The group was allegedly engaged in drug trafficking and laundering money obtained illicitly through the purchase and sale of high-end vehicles and luxury real estate.
Simón Montero Jorodorovich, according to the investigation, established contact with the honorary consuls to do business and launder money. With the delegate of Mali, he set in motion an industrial machinery intended to extract oil from the marijuana plants that would be cultivated in Mali, which was not completed, and whose ultimate goal was to distribute the narcotic substance. The project was financed by Simón Montero and entailed an investment of 517,104 euros, plus 30% that would be paid in cash and without declaring. This last amount would be handed over by the Malian consul to the builders. The diplomat has always maintained that he already has a hemp crop in the African country and that the goal was medicinal.
The machine, of large dimensions, was intervened in September 2018 in Asturias, before it was put into operation. It had the capacity to treat 400 kilos of hemp and extract 40 liters of pure oil in less than twelve hours.
The Honorary Consul of Albania is being investigated for having sold Simón Montero a house in Seva (Osona) for a value higher than what had been registered. The sale was closed for 280,000 euros, of which 135,000 came from funds of a company of the head of the plot and for which three checks were used for a total of 110,000 euros, the origin of which were cash impositions.
The consul of Croatia, Juli Bárcena, always maintained his innocence and asserted that he met Simón Montero at a reception in the Parliament and that from that moment he spoke with him a couple of times about social projects of the collective gypsy, but without carrying out any business.
According to the judge, those investigated by the Jodorovich family “form a network of commercial operations that makes it difficult to follow the trail of money that moves between natural and legal persons. To make tracing difficult, there are companies that own other companies, and even grant loans, and that are attributed income that does not exist, but that are injections of black moneyâ€.
The organization bought luxury cars, real estate and bars like El Camarón to launder the money and reintroduce it into legal tender. In addition, the judge points out that one of the group’s members, Amadeo Montero, won the lottery 13 times in two different draws. The National Lottery in July 2013 and the Christmas draw in December 2014.
