Anti-drug prosecutors have requested an 18-year prison sentence and a €30million fine for the stepson of Marbella mayor Angeles Muñoz.
Joakim Broberg, 52, is one 24 defendants accused of helping run the Mocro Maffia’s operations on the Costa del Sol.
Broberg had been facing 22 years in jail before prosecutors dropped a bribery charge, which alleged he had paid a municipal police officer to extract information from City Hall databases.
The other defendants are each facing between two and 16 years behind bars, if convicted.
The National Court is trying them for allegedly transporting narcotics, primarily hashish and marijuana from Morocco, between Spain and Sweden in 2019 and 2020.
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The defendants’ lawyers have requested an acquittal, claiming the alleged crimes have not been proven.
Broberg wire taps
The defendants consist of 11 Swedes, six Poles, three Spaniards, two Germans, one Dutchman, and a Macedonian.
The investigation led police to Joakim Broberg, son of Costa del Sol construction entrepreneur Lars Gunnar Broberg, who had been married for decades to mayor Muñoz (before his death at 80 years old in 2023).
The tapping of Joakim Broberg’s phone surprised Spanish officers in 2019 when he told an associate: ‘Basically, we own f***ing Andalucia.’
The comment was made while celebrating the re-election of the conservative Partido Popular (PP) party in Marbella, where his stepmother governs.
It came months after the-now President of Andalucia, Juan Moreno, also of the PP, won the regional elections.
Muñoz’s name, her title as Mayor of Marbella, and the nickname by which she is known to those around her, Titi, appear repeatedly in the summary of the case.
The police proposed in a report that Muñoz’s alleged use of power by her family members become a specific line of investigation. However, neither the Anti-Drug Prosecutor’s Office nor the National Court found sufficient evidence.
Muñoz has always denied any knowledge of her husband and her stepson’s alleged criminal activity.
The prosecutor told the court that Lars Broberg helped Muñoz’s stepson launder drug money.
How Broberg’s alleged network operated
According to court documents, the drugs were smuggled from Morocco to Spain, before being transported to Sweden for distribution.
With the help of Spaniard Roberto Bayona, Broberg led the network that made various ‘large’ deliveries of marijuana to France, bound for Sweden, prosecutors claim.
The Marbella mayor’s stepson acted as the ‘boss’, the prosecutor insisted, and was responsible for ‘maintaining contact with suppliers and clients,’ while Bayona, acting on the Swede’s orders, was in charge of conducting the necessary ‘personal interviews, surveillance, and shuttle services.’
The prosecutor said that although no drugs were seized from Broberg nor Bayona, there is sufficient Supreme Court precedent that allows for conviction if other pieces of evidence point to drug trafficking.
This she said, has been proven through the wiretapped conversations between the defendants, which show that they were handling illegal drugs.
According to the prosecutor, the actions of another Swedish defendant, Marko M., have also been key to the plot. Marko M. acted as a manager and financier of the drug trafficking operations coordinated by Broberg, she said.
Regarding money laundering, the prosecutor referred to the report prepared by a Policia Nacional inspector who concluded that the stepson of the mayor of Marbella and his associates laundered more than €7million, allegedly from drug trafficking.
Sales of the imported drugs on the black market in Sweden and other neighbouring countries generated huge economic profits for the network, allowing its members to maintain a very high standard of living, the court heard.
