For a man nicknamed “The Dull One” by colleagues, there were a few surprises in store when officers paid a visit to the homes of Óscar Sánchez Gil, the head of Spain’s economic crimes national police unit.
The walls and furniture were stuffed with more than €20 million in cash, allegedly the proceeds of drug trafficking. He had, it was alleged, an insatiable appetite for money and had set up a criminal family business, involving his police officer wife, at the heart of one of Spain’s biggest narcotics cartels.
A distant cousin of the former king Juan Carlos and, as the youngest son of the Duke of Seville, a scion of Europe’s royal house of Bourbon, Francisco de Borbón seemed unlikely to have led a dull life. Yet in the latest revelation from a scandal that has rocked the country, he has been arrested for allegedly laundering the group’s drug cash through cryptocurrency.
The aristocrat’s illustrious surname has made his arrest headline news in Spain. The name has been a disadvantage to him in the past, he has said. Participating in the US reality show Secret Princes broadcast in 2012, in which European nobles look for love in America, he claimed that his status was a handicap when seeking a partner because “you never know if they approach you because they see you are a Bourbon and want to be a princess or a duchess”.
Borbón has been detained in Spain
Borbón was one of four people arrested for their alleged involvement in the money-laundering network used by a drug-trafficking organisation led by Sánchez and Ignacio Torán, a suspected drug kingpin based in Spain.
Due to his nickname, it was difficult for officers to believe that Sánchez, who led the Unidad de Delincuencia Económica y Fiscal (UDEF), was involved in an operation that culminated in the largest cocaine seizure in Spanish history, with an estimated street value of between €400 million and €700 million.
Publicly, Sánchez appeared to live a modest, middle-class life. Born in Madrid and now 50, he was described by colleagues as distant and reserved.
He lived with his wife and two young children in a semi-detached house in Villalbilla, east of the capital, drove an ageing Citroën and a decade-old Land Rover, and supported Real Madrid. He spent holidays at a second home in Denia, on the Mediterranean coast.
The largest bust in the history of drug trafficking in Spain in 2024
The reality uncovered by investigators was starkly different. When internal affairs officers, canine units and a specialist search team raided his Villalbilla home on November 6, 2024, they seized €18.9 million hidden throughout the property — inside walls, double floors, the garden, safes, trunks and concealed compartments.
The money was so extensive that a court official told the judge it was “impossible to count it during the search”. The cash was sealed and later transported under armed escort to Madrid for counting.
Further searches found €448,110 hidden in a wardrobe and tool room at his Denia home, and €896,400 concealed in his office at Madrid’s police headquarters, along with a vacuum-sealing machine, a USB drive disguised as a police car, and handwritten notes referring to an “international business network” and a “laundering plan” involving €14 million in cryptoassets.
Investigators said that intercepted communications showed Sánchez urging Torán to increase shipments during the pandemic, when controls were lighter, revealing an ambition that contrasted with his public image.
They have alleged that Torán paid Sánchez to protect the organisation and tip it off to police activity, facilitating the entry of vast quantities of drugs into the country. In return, the officer received what investigators described as “brutal” kickbacks, so large that he and Torán had to devise multiple methods to launder the proceeds.
A court order said: “His senior position in the organisational structure of the Drug and Organised Crime Unit gave him access to all relevant information on money-laundering and drug-trafficking investigations that might be initiated.
The magistrate noted that while Sánchez “could not prevent the seizure of a container with 1,650kg of cocaine” in May 2021, he was able to “minimise the risks for the organisation”.
They added that he had allegedly been receiving continuous payments for at least five years through a corporate structure created by Torán, “proceeding to launder and introduce them into the legal economic system”.
Sophie Karoly marrying Borbón in October 2021
LEANDRO WASSAUL/EUROPA PRESS/GETTY IMAGES
The operation stunned Spain’s National Police Corps. “It is true that he was a reserved person who spoke little, but nobody could have imagined anything like this,” ABC newspaper said. Police sources said Sánchez had been under suspicion for more than a year.
He rose to head the economic crimes unit after serving in the drugs and organised crime division, where investigators believe he established links with traffickers.
The investigation also implicates Sánchez’s wife, also a national police officer, and his sister-in-law, Yolanda Ruiz, who allegedly headed a business conglomerate used to launder money. The inquiry details multiple laundering methods and has also placed Mario Pestaña, a lawyer who appeared in the Pandora Papers leak of offshore documents, under investigation. Investigators described Pestaña as a co-ordinator of part of the laundering “strategy”.
Among the latest detainees, Borbón’s name appears in Ireland’s official registry as one of the founders of ET Finetch Europe, a cryptocurrency firm cited in the case being investigated.
Documents accessed by El País show that the Dublin-registered company listed Borbón alongside two other suspects: Juan Ángel Cervera, known as “Juan the financier”, who allegedly designed part of the financial architecture used to move drug money, and Ángel Luis Cano, who has denied any involvement.
In the US reality show Borbón claimed to be “three times a prince, third in line to be King of France and future Duke of Seville”. The last public images of Borbón were taken in May 2025 at the funeral of his father. His mother was the German Countess Beatrice von Hardenberg-Fürstenberg.
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Based in Madrid and Marbella, he married Sophie Elizabeth Karoly, an Austrian communications professional, in 2021. He has devoted part of his career to the business world as co-founder of a US-based investment firm.
The case also centres on Eduardo Montero Salgado, described by police as Torán’s trusted lieutenant. Searches of his properties uncovered a bunker containing vacuum-sealed packages labelled “100k”, a banknote-counting machine, and a 64kg container filled with €2 coins.
Luxury vehicles, including a Lamborghini, Audi and BMW, were found parked at his home, and one of his warehouses contained a cryptocurrency mining room operating around the clock.
Montero is a cousin of Alejandro Salgado Vega, known as El Tigre, one of Spain’s most powerful drug traffickers, whom investigators believe is in Dubai. El Tigre has been linked to a 2021 container shipment containing 1.6 tonnes of cocaine hidden among pineapples.
Of the four people detained this week, three are Spanish nationals and one is foreign. One of them worked as a jeweller in Marbella. According to sources close to the investigation, this week’s operation marks the final phase of arrests.