Netflix forced to remove sex scene that offended drug trafficker

Notorious drug smuggler Laureano Oubina will be paid more than $24K for violation of privacy.

Laureano Oubina wanted $2.42m from Netflix for its portrayal of him as a violent, sexist, cocaine trafficker. Picture: Getty Images

Netflix has been forced to remove a scene from a hit crime series after a notorious drug smuggler sued over a depiction of him having sex with his wife.

Laureano Oubina, from Galicia in northwest Spain, was enraged by his portrayal as a brutish crime lord in hit television series Cocaine Coast, also known as Farina, and sued the company and its producer.

A judge has now ordered Netflix to cut the brief sex scene, which occurs in the opening moments of the first episode when a police raid interrupts Oubina in an amorous entanglement, and to pay him €15,000 ($24,150) for violating his privacy.

The court judged that the part of the series was not justified by “the undeniable creative freedom of the creators and producers of the series”. Although it showed only the backs of the actors playing Oubina and his wife, the court ordered the companies to remove the “explicit sex” scene.

Cocaine Coast, released in 2018, gave a fictional depiction of the rise of Galicia’s drug clans in the 1980s and 1990s. Picture: The Times

Oubina, 78, who was released in 2017 after being convicted of trafficking marijuana and money laundering, claims the television series caused him “moral damage” and tried to sue Netflix for €1.5 million ($2.42m) for portraying him as a violent cocaine trafficker.

“The life of Mr Laureano Oubina has worsened considerably since the broadcast of this series because he is portrayed as a person capable of taking the life of another, violent, sexist, a cocaine trafficker, impotent, vicious, unfaithful, a bad father, a bad husband, a brute, foolish, vengeful, an abuser of women, ignorant and a mafioso,” his lawyer, Jorge Paladino, said.

Oubina was arrested in 2000 and charged with smuggling 28 tonnes of cannabis. Picture: Eurokinissi/AP/The Times

The court rejected the other complaints in their entirety. When analysing “the collision” between the freedom of artistic creation and the right to honour, freedom and one’s own image, the court said that a work “inspired by reality” cannot be subject to a “demand for veracity”, as in the case of a journalistic work or a documentary.

The case is one of a string of lawsuits against the streaming giant for dramatisations based on real events, including The Queen’s Gambit, Inventing Anna and Baby Reindeer.

Cocaine Coast gives a fictionalised account of the rise of Galicia’s drug clans in the 1980s and 1990s. In the 1940s the clans smuggled basic items such as sugar and soap from Portugal. Two decades later they moved into American tobacco and then marijuana from Morocco and cocaine from Colombia.

The Times