A court in Belgorod is completing the trial of 51-year-old local resident Oksana Zubareva over her role in a record 10-tonne Atlantic cocaine shipment. Law enforcement authorities accuse Zubareva of acting as a key organizer in an international drug syndicate that loaded nearly ten tonnes of cocaine onto the cargo ship ESER seven years ago.
Zubareva was arrested in Belgorod in September 2024 and charged with attempted large-scale drug dealing. Prosecutors are preparing to present closing arguments in her trial at the Belgorod District Court on September 2, 2026.
During recent court sessions, Zubareva filed a formal petition asking to be sent to serve under contract in the combat zone of the special military operation in Ukraine. She stated that she wished to defend her country and support the Russian army, arguing she would be of greater use at the front. The court did not rule on her petition.
Having confessed to her involvement and expressed remorse, Zubareva faces up to 11.5 years in prison under Russian law. The prosecutor disclosed during court proceedings that Cape Verde authorities destroyed almost nine tonnes of the seized cocaine by burning it on February 2, 2019.
Cargo ship intercepted in Cape Verde
The criminal case traces back to January 12, 2019, when the cargo vessel ESER departed from the Panamanian port of Colón, bound for Tangier in Morocco. The vessel carried a crew of 12 Russian sailors under the command of captain Sergei Kotlovsky.
Built in 1985, the ESER was heavily worn and in poor technical condition. Its main engine, fixed satellite communications, and onboard navigation tools malfunctioned shortly after setting sail, forcing Kotlovsky to anchor near the islands of Aruba and Curaçao for emergency repairs.
On January 12, 2019, after leaving Curaçao, Kotlovsky received orders on a mobile phone provided by his employers to deviate from the planned route to Morocco. He was instructed to proceed to specific coordinates off the coast of Venezuela to take on cargo from approaching vessels.
When Kotlovsky objected, stating that the crew had not agreed to an unannounced loading and did not know the cargo contents, the organizers issued direct threats. They stated they possessed full employment records containing the home addresses of all crew members and their families, warning Kotlovsky that they would sever his head and genitals if he threw the cargo overboard.
The ESER halted approximately 30 miles off the Venezuelan coast, where several boats met the cargo ship. Armed men in shorts, t-shirts, and blue work overalls loaded rectangular bales onto the stern deck using the ship's crane, while another vessel equipped with a machine gun stood guard 200 to 300 meters away.
The boatswain counted 260 rectangular packages, each measuring roughly 60 by 40 centimeters and weighing about 30 kilograms. Although the sailors realized the cargo was illegal, they refrained from throwing the bales into the sea out of fear that the armed traffickers were watching.
Russian sailors jailed in West Africa
The ship's sudden change of course attracted immediate scrutiny from the Maritime Analysis and Operations Centre Narcotics, a European maritime surveillance agency. When the ESER put into port at the island nation of Cape Verde off the West African coast on January 30, 2019, local police were waiting to board.
Officers searched the vessel's internal compartments and discovered the dense packages, which weighed a combined 9,570 kilograms including packaging. Field tests confirmed the contents were high-purity cocaine.
All 11 surviving crew members were arrested and remanded to the central prison in Praia. The sailors endured severe prison conditions, including cells without toilets, a regular diet restricted largely to rice that caused severe weight loss, rules published only in Portuguese, and minimal access to medical treatment.
In summer 2019, prosecutors in Cape Verde formally charged the crew with aggravated international drug trafficking and participation in a criminal organization. A judicial panel rejected the sailors' claims that they acted under gunpoint threats, ruling they had willingly served as drug couriers for financial gain.
The court sentenced captain Kotlovsky to 12 years in prison and handed 10-year terms to the remaining crew members. The Supreme Court of Cape Verde later reduced Kotlovsky's sentence to 10 years and trimmed the crew members' terms to seven and eight years. Russian Human Rights Commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova repeatedly requested their transfer to serve their sentences in Russian penal colonies.
Two Russian crew members died in custody in Cape Verde before they could return home. Kotlovsky was released after serving five years and one month upon reaching 75 years of age, the maximum age limit for imprisonment under Cape Verde law.
The surviving crew members were released after serving portions of their sentences and returned to Russia in March 2024. Questioning of Kotlovsky by Russian law enforcement provided crucial evidence that launched the domestic criminal case against Zubareva.
Moscow meeting at the Radisson
Kotlovsky stated that he had been unemployed in October 2018 after his previous maritime contract ended and his ship was sold. After posting his resume online, he received a phone call from Zubareva, who claimed a foreign company was buying a freighter for commercial voyages in the Caribbean.
Zubareva instructed Kotlovsky to recruit a full crew and invited him to Moscow for negotiations, paying for his travel tickets and accommodation at the Radisson hotel.
At the meeting, Zubareva was accompanied by a Spanish man introduced as a representative of the ship's prospective owner. Because the Spaniard spoke neither Russian nor English, Zubareva conducted all discussions as the sole interpreter.
Kotlovsky negotiated monthly salaries of 7,000 dollars for himself and 1,600 dollars for each crew member, rejecting initial lower offers until Zubareva agreed to his terms. The agreement provided for a one-year contract with crew rotations every two or three months.
On December 19, 2018, twelve crew members gathered in Moscow before flying to Panama City, boarding the ESER in late December. Kotlovsky was handed a mobile phone to maintain direct contact with the employers.
The vessel departed Colón on January 4, 2019, completely empty and without standard shipping documentation listing the sender, recipient, or cargo details. Kotlovsky noted that it was highly unusual for a commercial freighter to sail back and forth without cargo.
Venezuelan coast drug pickup
After picking up the 260 drug bales off the Venezuelan coast, Kotlovsky steered the ship eastward across the Atlantic, hoping to avoid American patrols and Caribbean coast guard cutters while awaiting delivery instructions.
On January 22, 2019, ten days into the crossing, the chief mate died on board from complications resulting from earlier automobile accident injuries. His death forced the crew to alter course to the nearest port at Cape Verde to offload his body, leading directly to the police inspection.
Ties to Spanish drug cartel
Russian investigators traced Zubareva's connections to international drug trafficking back to the 1990s, when she moved to Spain to work in bars and restaurants before launching a retail children's clothing business.
In 2003, she met Galician entrepreneur Alfonso Juncal Santos in Madrid, giving birth to their child in 2004. Santos managed Nanton, a holding group registered in Belize that controlled about 20 companies and six fishing vessels across Europe, Africa, and Asia, operating in commercial fishing, construction, mining, tourism, and equipment rentals.
Spanish authorities determined that Nanton operated as a front to launder proceeds from Colombian cocaine trafficking. Santos was arrested in late 2006 during Operation Destello, a sweeping Spanish police operation against international drug networks, and was subsequently sentenced to eight years in prison.
In June 2007, Spanish newspaper El País reported that police were searching for 32-year-old Russian national Osana Zumareva on suspicion of attempting to shield her husband's seized assets from court confiscation.
Zubareva returned to Russia with her two children, opening a children's goods store in Belgorod and registering a Russian company called Nanton in 2005 for wholesale seafood trading. In 2014, she returned to Spain, where she officially married Santos.
By 2018, Zubareva was working as a florist in Belgorod when Santos proposed setting up a new enterprise to import food products from Spain. She became the sole Russian-speaking intermediary connecting the foreign organizers with the Russian crew.
Following the interception of the ESER, Zubareva continued living in the Belgorod region, registering as an individual entrepreneur and operating a dog kennel housing 40 dogs.
During initial questioning, Zubareva claimed she had merely translated business talks for her husband. She later altered her statement, saying she was fraudulently drawn into the syndicate and feared Santos, before retracting that statement three weeks later.
Shelved international investigation
Russian investigators first identified Zubareva's involvement in 2019, according to retired justice colonel Sergei Pelikh, former head of the organized crime drug trafficking department at the Russian Interior Ministry.
Pelikh stated that Russian and Spanish law enforcement identified more than 40 suspects and dozens of shell entities. Russian sailors convicted in an earlier transatlantic cocaine smuggling operation identified Zubareva and Santos from photographs as key organizers of that prior shipment.
Spanish courts convicted around 30 individuals tied to the syndicate. However, joint plans for coordinated arrests across Europe, Africa, and Latin America stalled after the Russian investigative team was reassigned and the case file was placed in archives.
Pelikh explained that shelving the file allowed Zubareva to remain free until her September 2024 arrest, describing the current charges as overly narrow given the network's scope. The present whereabouts of her husband, Alfonso Juncal Santos, remain unknown.
