February. Three in the morning. A hooded person enters the facilities Cepa 21 Winery and in less than a minute he opens the taps of five steel tanks, of which three were full. 60,000 liters of high-quality wine are spilled on the floor, representing a loss of more than two million euros that leaves the company on the brink of ruin. It could be the synopsis of one of Netflix’s latest hits, a modern Falcon Crest with several fictional twists and a happy ending, but it is not. It happened in Castrillo de Duero and the police arrested a former employee on Thursday as the alleged perpetrator of the crime.
Police sources confirm that the woman’s contract with the company had ended two days before the incident, so they are talking about a “personal revenge” that she could have planned in detail, since she had been informed of the dismissal fifteen days before. She knew the facilities and the security codes perfectly. She was arrested on Thursday in the town of Villaescusa de Ro (Burgos), where her home was also searched and her partner was investigated for his possible connection with the sabotage.
An arrest that brings little comfort to Jose Moropresident of Cepa 21, sunk in his first interview in TardeAR: “I don’t understand how someone could have committed such an atrocity. There was no profit in this sabotage, only to dump 60,000 litres of wine down the drain. A wine that many families drink from.”, he said dejectedly. Now, he only hopes for justice: “We have to make sure that the Civil Guard studies all the evidence, the evidence and finds all the people who have done this. They have been very hard months,” he told The confidential. And in addition to the economic losses, they have faced malicious comments that pointed out the events as a family vendetta: “It was very ugly.”
The alleged attacker ruined the entire Horcajo harvest, some 20,000 litres, the most expensive wine produced by Cepa 21, at 80.64 euros per bottle; a considerable volume of Malabrigo (31.14 euros) and a good part of Cepa 21, which is priced at 18.45 euros, were also lost. Moro has also revealed that the wine insurance company has still not paid a single euro of compensation: “After the expert report, confirming that it was not anyone from the winery, proving that it is quality wine, they should have paid and they haven’t. They have had very little sensitivity towards the workers.”
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