2023-05-15 09:15:12
The agents of the Central Operating Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard began in January 2021 an investigation against the members of what they describe as a “criminal group” that illegally distributed medicines. And they did it after detect that the doctor Marcos Maynar and other people who acted as intermediaries received and sent postal packages with supposedly doping substancesas specified in an order of October 13, 2022 of the Second Section of the Provincial Court of Cáceres, to which he has had access The Newspaper of Spainfrom the Iberian Press group.
The magistrates explain that throughout the police investigation they proceeded to “examine -through the scanner and in some cases subsequent opening- of certain parcel shipments in which it was observed that they contained what apparently they were drugs, of the capsule type, distributed in self-closing bags or containers that, in most casesThey didn’t look commercial.
These shipments, which were not made through the regulated channels for the transfer of drugs, were sent by the doctor Maynar, -who had already been investigated for trafficking in doping substances- and whose recipients were people linked to the sport of cycling. The guards opened some of the packages, the contents of which they examined and took samples..
‘Operation Ilex’
The agents expressed their conclusions in a police report in which they informed the head of the Court of First Instance and Instruction number 4 of Cáceres, which instructs the so-called ‘Operation Ilex‘ o maynar caseof the suspicious substances that they had discovered after the “scanning and sampling of various postal packages“. The judge, after studying the UCO report, issued an order on November 8, 2021 in which she alluded to the police investigations, specifically the “interceptions” of packages sent on April 19, April 20 , on July 27 and July 28, 2021.
One of the packages contained capsules that included dichloroacetic acid and Actovegin Forte, substances whose use is not authorized in Spain. For this reason, the judge and the magistrates of Cáceres considered that they could be committing “an alleged crime of illicit drug trafficking”, which poses “a risk or danger to the life or health of athletes through doping substances (some of them without traceability to the come from unauthorized laboratories, black market or own manufacture and do not respect the regulations in force in its transport), as well as other drugs prohibited in Spain”, highlights the order of October 13, 2022 of the Second Section of the Cáceres Court.
an official report
The instructor, who also had access to a report prepared by the Spanish Agency for Medicines and Health Products (AEMPS), was convinced of the existence of sufficient indications that those investigated were sending parcels from the headquarters of the University of Cáceres “to professional cyclists now Vicente Belda Vicedo, ex-cyclist allegedly dedicated to directing the sports career of other cyclists, who in turn could direct all or part of the content of the shipments to some of these”, continues the order of the Cáceres Court.
The magistrates specify that on July 26, 2021, the Civil Guard intercepted a cyclist related to Vicente Belda at the Alicante airport with different medicines and capsules. The products were not illegal, but detection of him raised suspicions about Maynar’s activities. As explained by sources of the case to The Newspaper of Spain, it was a cyclist of Colombian nationality who is not charged, and who was not Miguel Ángel ‘Supermán’ López. However, the latter ended up fired by the Astana cycling group for his “probable connection” with the controversial physician. The club sponsored by the Government of Kazakhstan also dispensed with the services of Vicente Belda García, son of the former cyclist who worked as a physiotherapist.
‘Supermán’ López is not charged in the case. On the contrary, the Belda, whose role in the alleged plot would be that of intermediaries between the doctor and the athletes, appeared last Thursday as investigated before the judge of Cáceres by videoconference from the Courts of Alcoi (Alicante). In statements to Efe, Maynar admitted that, among other athletes, he recommended to “Supermán” López, the use of Actovegin, known as the ‘EPO of the poor’, and that it makes the “cardiac muscle suffer less during the effort”. “It is not a substance that is on the doping lists, therefore it is not doping”, he assured.
This Colombian athlete has always denied having doped, and for this reason he has recently published a note on his social networks in which he reports that has passed “the anti-doping biological passport controls” for which, he assures, “he has full authorization to compete in any team after its renewed UCI license for the year 2023″.
Criticism of the UCO
The defense of Marcos Maynar argued before the Provincial Court of Cáceres that the UCO acted in an “oversized” manner and that it carried out a “generalized survey, carrying out this act for six months without objective data of any kind”. The lawyer also defended that the Civil Guard had “unilaterally conducted an investigation” without having informed the Court. In addition, it assured that the Judicial Police had prepared a report based “on subjective elements, simply by knowing the name of a person who in his day was investigated more than a decade ago“.
Finally, the doctor’s lawyer censured the instructor’s actions, as he assured that with his order of October 27, 2021 opened some proceedings with “an alleged indication of non-existent criminality” in relation to a possible crime of substances harmful to health, “when there was no analysis of any kind”, since this did not occur until several months later.
Court endorsement
However, the magistrates from Cáceres have endorsed, at all times, the legality of the actions of the agents of the Civil Guard and the decisions of the instructor of the so-called ‘Operation Ilex’.
At the request of the defenses that the proceedings carried out by the UCO be annulled, the judge replied that the agents did not require judicial authorization to carry out the searches, since the Judicial Police can carry them out “in the correspondence control exercise“, as for example occurred in a shipment of April 19, 2021.
The judge’s version was confirmed by the Court of Cáceres, whose order recalls that the examination through a scanner of the content of postal or parcel shipments is a security activity for which judicial authorization is not required: “In police proceedings It was rightly indicated that when it comes to packages or shipments not included within the secret nature of communications, the level of protection corresponds to that provided for personal privacy in article 18.1 of the Spanish Constitution, which implies that The administrative authority may proceed to open it and to inspect and control its content.being in this case necessary and appropriate to determine the nature of the content”, says the order of the Provincial Court of Cáceres.
Previous investigations
The magistrates explain, in the same sense, that these parcel controls are not limited only to cases in which there are solid indications of a crime, but that they can be carried out “even randomly.” This is the reason why the Court does not find any irregularity in the fact that the UCO scanned the correspondence of “who previously he had been immersed in investigations related to the doping of athletes”.
In the resolution of October 13, 2022, the magistrates show that in the images captured in the police proceedings “some capsules can be seen in self-closing bags or in containers without commercial identification, with handwritten indications”, which suggests that it was “a clandestine manufacture”.
In this sense, the UCO pointed out that the elaboration and preparation of the packages with the substances under investigation were carried out by Dr. Maynar “in a closed area such as the home itself or the facilities of the university laboratory, constituting places out of the access of people in general; the first for obvious reasons as it is a strictly private place, due to its domicile nature, and the second for being a place with restricted access for authorized personnel”.
On the other hand, the judge has agreed to the appearance of the State Attorney on behalf of the State Agency Spanish Commission for the Fight against Doping in Sport (CELAD)), as confirmed by the Superior Court of Justice of Extremadura to El Periódico de España.
#UCO #began #investigation #doping #cycling #detecting #packages #prohibited #substances