To outsiders, Tania Gomez was the glamorous 33-year-old owner of a dog rescue centre in Stockholm, who had moved to Lanzarote for a quieter life.
But to police, she was known as the “Cocaine Queen of Europe” and one of the Continent’s most wanted fugitives.
Now, after four years on the run, she has been captured, and is facing extradition back to her homeland on suspicion of drug trafficking and money laundering. If convicted, she faces a potential prison sentence of 14 years.
Charges were brought against Gomez in 2021, after a huge drugs bust led Swedish prosecutors to accuse her of smuggling consignments of cannabis into Sweden as well as handling large amounts of cocaine.
Credit: Lancelot Digital
In May 2020, she allegedly received 10 kilograms of cocaine in the Stockholm area, transported it to her home, where the drug was examined and tested, before being sold on.
Gomez, who was included in Europol’s 50 most-wanted fugitives in 2023 and described as being 1.60m tall (5ft 2in) with brown eyes, had developed a seemingly innocent cover for her alleged criminal activities as a smiley Instagram influencer with a special interest in rescued dogs.
Gomez ran the HundGärin dog rescue charity organisation in Stockholm until she went into hiding and fled the country, and the organisation still has photographs of her posing with bulldogs and pit bull terriers on its Facebook page.
Swedish prosecutors have said they suspect that her canine charity was itself a criminal operation that “linked businesses related to stray animals and probably to a network of illegal animal ownership and their transport abroad”.
Gomez kept a lower profile since moving to the Canary Islands, with her need to blend into the surroundings made easier by her fluency in the language. Her father is Spanish.
Spain’s national police force said that they received new information about Gomez´s whereabouts on February 7 and traced her to her home in Tías, a sleepy town of 21,000 inhabitants in the hills of southern Lanzarote.
Gomez is being held in jail while Spain’s national court decides on Sweden’s extradition request. Extraditions between EU countries are virtually automatic.
Swedish prosecutors have said they suspect that her canine charity was itself a criminal operation
As well as trafficking drugs, Gomez is accused by Swedish authorities of playing a role in a major criminal organisation dedicated to laundering the proceeds from drug sales.
Specifically, prosecutors accused Gomez of handling 1.8 million kronor (£133,000) as part of a drug deal, and she is also alleged to have dropped off and picked up over four million kronor at the World Exchange currency exchange office in Stockholm.
World Exchange, which was raided by Swedish police in June 2020, posed as a normal currency exchange outlet while operating as a bank for criminal organisations to exchange money and launder funds.
Behind removable panels in the premises’ kitchen, ceiling and in secret hatches, police found bags of cash totalling 15 million kronor and marked with the names of different criminal gangs from around Sweden, although World Exchange also had contacts with organisations in other countries including Germany, Serbia, Turkey and Spain.
Surveillance images showed how a suspected criminal entered the exchange office with a bag of banknotes, which were then counted and recorded in a handwritten ledger. Twelve people were charged in connection with the raid.
Prosecutors said 220 million kronor were suspected of having been laundered through the office over 18 months.
“We suspect that this company functioned as a bank for a number of criminal networks and criminal individuals. This is organised systematic money laundering. And what has been laundered is actually drug money,” said prosecutor Ulrika Lindsö after the raid.