The Dj accused of introducing into Ibiza narcotics valued at more than 26,000 euros in a private plane from Las Vegas in July 2021, has denied today before the Provincial Court the accusations against him and has assured that he does not know the origin of the drugs.
This is what he has expressed in his statement in the trial, in which he has intervened last and after having heard numerous witnesses who have indicated that he himself recognized, at the time of the discovery, that the substances belonged to him.
The First Section of the Provincial Court of Palma has finished this Friday the trial against the accused, for whom the Public Prosecution requests a sentence of nine years in prison and a fine of 53,000 euros as the alleged perpetrator of a crime against public health.
The defense of the man, who is jointly practiced by three lawyers, requests that he be acquitted, considering that it has not been possible to certify that the suitcase in which the narcotic substances were found was his and that there were deficiencies in the chain of custody of the same.
The suitcases were not his
The defendant, 37 years old and a U.S. nationalacknowledged that in the early morning hours of July 16, 2021, he arrived at the ibiza airport in a private jet from Las Vegas with about thirty other people invited by him.
He pointed out that he had three pieces of hand luggage with him, but that he did not carry any of the different narcotics -cocaine, marijuana, ketamine, MDMA…- that the prosecutor listed.
Although he has recognized that he knows that he is accused of trying to introduce all these substances, supposedly with the aim of distributing them to third parties, he has assured that the suitcases in which they were found were not his.
Yes, he has admitted, he introduced into the scanner suitcases that did not belong to him with the intention of speeding up the procedures. “There was a lot of hustle and bustle. One of the people who were working at the scanner – civil guards or customs agents – asked me in Spanish if it was mine, and I i said it was all mine because I had chartered the plane“, he said, assisted by an interpreter.
It was at that moment, he said, when they introduced him in a room and opened the aforementioned luggage, from which they extracted various amounts of different drugs. “That’s when I realized that the matter was serious. I didn’t know what was going on, I was like frozen, in shock . I didn’t say anything,” he recalled.
“The only thing I said, in Spanish, was that it was all mine. When [el asunto] got serious they put me in a room where everyone was speaking Spanish and I didn’t understand anything,” he has added. “I didn’t know how to explain myself. I said I didn’t understand what was going on and I needed someone to translate for me,” he has continued.
His level of Spanish, he has defended, is not sufficient to have a conversation beyond basic questions such as “please or thank you”.
The representative of the Public Prosecutor’s Office questioned him why the agents said that he was concerned about the fate of the suitcases. Some of his luggage, he replied, was also searched and his belongings were being mixed with those of others.
His lawyer, among other things, has questioned him about his personal and business situation. The defendant has assured that owns 25 percent of the shares of a Kuwaiti construction companyvalued at one billion euros, and holds a position in that company for which he receives the equivalent of 70,000 euros per month.
To all this, he has assured, he adds the income he receives from multiple other businesses. In Ibizaas an example, has an office where people from different parts of the world can come to work when they are on the island.
Drug localization
This Friday, two of the agents from Customs Surveillance who on the day of the facts were in the area where the control of documentation and hand luggage of the passengers of the private plane was established.
In line with what was stated by the rest of the colleagues and members of the Civil Guard who were in the same place, they have assured that the defendant admitted that the suitcases with the narcotic substances were his property.
“When we opened the suitcase it already smelled a lot of marijuanait caught our attention. We asked him if he had anything, and he said no, but when we started to take things out we found them,” said one of them, who said that in the suitcase there was also documentation of the accused.
As they found the different doses of narcotics, both of them agreed, the man collaborated with them in identifying the type of drug they were.
In the first session of the oral hearing, held this Thursday, three agents of the Civil Guard certified that the suitcases in which the drugs were found belonged to the accused, and that this was admitted by the accused himself when asked about it. “He was simply asked if it was his and he said yes. He said it was all his and it was for him,” one of them stressed.
Final reports
The prosecutor, who has maintained her sentence request, has considered that it has been proven that the luggage in which the narcotics were found belonged to the defendantthe defendant was watching her during the entire control.
“It is absurd to think that if this suitcase that he assumes as his own was in the control was someone else’s, this one was not pending of it, because inside there were numerous and valuable substances. We know that the defendant has a high purchasing power, but perhaps his friends not so much,” he said.
In addition, he has argued that the defendant has a sufficient level of Spanish to have made the agents understand that the luggage was not his. “He said ‘everything is mine’. If he had said ‘all this is not mine’ maybe we would be in a different situation,” he has ironized.
The defense lawyer, for her part, has defended that through the evidence practiced it cannot be determined with total certainty that the suitcase in which the drugs were found belonged to her client. “He is an impeccable person who has no criminal or police record, he has never had even the slightest setback in his life,” he said.
He also considered it contradictory that if the defendant’s intention was to introduce the drugs for distribution, they were in plain view inside the luggage and not, for example, in a double bottom.
Finally, he has pointed to the various errors that, in his opinion, the Civil Guard committed throughout the investigation and the drafting of the attestation, which he has considered that would invalidate the accusation against his defendant. “We cannot rule out that everything was a confusion,” he said.
The facts judged
According to the Public Prosecutor’s Office in its indictment, at around 3:30 a.m. on July 16, 2021, the defendant landed at Ibiza airport on a private flight from Las Vegas accompanied by about 30 people.
Upon passing his hand luggage through the scanners, these revealed that inside it there were 83 grams of cocaine, 348 grams of ketamine, 52 grams of MDMA and 543 grams of cannabis, all valued at €26,514.
The Guardia Civil arrested the accused and, two days later, a court in Ibiza ordered him to be remanded in custody. A little less than a month later he was released pending trial, which this Friday has been scheduled for sentencing.
For the full article, please visit Diario de Ibiza website here.