Hit in Spain to a large Russian mafia of money laundering. The National Police arrested on January 21 to 14 alleged members of a network that operated as an authentic “multinational” money laundering for organizations dedicated to drug trafficking around the world, as reported on Wednesday the Ministry of Interior. Among those arrested are the three “ATMs” – two of Russian nationality and an Armenian -, responsible for moving “several million euros” per month, as well as a police officer who provided them with documentation to reside legally in Spain. The four have entered prison. During the operation, nine records have been carried out in Madrid, Málaga, Marbella, Torremolinos, Coín, Ayamonte and Lisbon, in which more than one million euros in cash and a cryptocurrency wallet have been intervened
The investigation – in which he has participated and Portuguese agents – has revealed that the organization had its own corporate plots to reintroduce the enormous benefits obtained in the legal economy. In fact, at the time of arrest, the network had two businesses. The first, in the province of Huelva, where I was going to acquire some land to lift a hotel complex with other investors. The second, in Cuba, where he had started contacts with the island’s authorities to lift a photovoltaic energy plant for which he was going to collect in nickel and gold. For this business, still incipient, they had hired a Spanish lawyer who presumed in their conversations to carry out the issues of a well -known Spanish politician, according to sources close to the investigation. The lawyer is not among those arrested, they detail these same sources.
The baptized as Operation Strongbox began in 2023, when the police detect the “constant and systematic activity of collection and delivery of cash” that several alleged members of Russian organized crime settled for a long time in Spain did in several cities and extended Its networks to other points in Europe such as the Netherlands, Estonia, Lithuania and Italy. The investigations revealed that the group had organized their activity in offices that, at the time of the operation, were nestled in Madrid, Marbella and Malaga, although they were previously in other locations such as Seville. “They moved them from one city to another for security reasons and also depending on where their customers were,” police sources detail.
At the head of each of them was what the police have baptized as a “cashier”, which was the person in charge of receiving the money from criminal organizations, as well as making it reach anywhere in the world. The organization changed these ATMs periodically and transferred them from one country to another where it had offices. In fact, one of those arrested in Spain has intervened documentation that aims that he had previously resided in Thailand, while the others have also stated that they have also exercised similar functions in the Netherlands and Italy, police sources point out.
To move the funds, rarely used the transfer of tickets. In most cases they used the hawala. These money movements were constant and, sometimes, included items close to 300,000 euros, according to the police. In exchange for their services, the Russian network charged between 2% and 3% of the amount transferred.
The clients of the plot were the capos of drug trafficking settled in Spain of Albanian, Moroccan, Serbian, Armenian, Chinese, Ukrainian, Colombian and La Mocro Maffia, one and settled in the Netherlands, which has become the main threat to the Safety of the states in which it sits. The objective of all of them when using the services of the Russian bleaching network was to avoid accumulating large amounts of cash in their residences in Spain to prevent them from being seized in case of a police operation.
The plot won the confidence of these criminal organizations with their “high professionalism, with sophistication never seen before, behaving as a real multinational capital laundering,” says Interior in his note. To do this, it had a strict “protocol” of action that forced the ATMs to thoroughly document the amounts received and delivered, the percentage charged, the issuance of receipts, the sending of photographs to certify the operations as well as the use of token (Code or signal, in English), usually a broken ticket in half of which the part you deliver and the one you receive has one of the parties. If the ATM did not comply with the protocol, the organization imposed on this fines of up to 5% of its salary.
Money counting in a closet
In addition, each office had a safe and the machine to count the money was inside a soundproof closet to prevent the characteristic noise that produces by counting tickets from outside the house. The members of the plot – which maintained a discreet standard of living – usually changed floors and vehicles, always rent, and took important security measures in their displacements and communications. Among them, the use of encrypted phones that, in the event that one was arrested, were blocked simultaneously, as happened when they were arrested last January. “We have not been able to access its content from its terminals,” laments one of the agents that has participated in the operation.
All these measures prevented, last summer, that the Russian network suffered the theft of more than half a million euros they stored in one of their offices. The cashier responsible for it observed suspicious movements and transferred the funds to another place. When they entered the floor, the assailants, belonging to an Armenian group, found nothing. The incident forced the leaders of this last organization to move to Spain to maintain an emergency meeting with the money laundering plot to solve the differences and that there is no escalation, detail police sources that have intervened in the operation.
In addition to laundering activities, the plot had the capacity to irregularly obtain documentation so that their ATMs and the members of other criminal organizations could move without problems through Europe. To do this, he had the help of a police officer for Ayamonte (Huelva), which is among the detainees. According to this part of the investigation, conducted by the Internal Affairs Unit (UAI), the plot managed This country.
