Alex Trelinski
A woman has been arrested in Tenerife as part of a probe into a crime gang suspected of laundering dirty money linked to the €219 million Magnitsky corruption case in Russia.
75 properties with a total value of €25 million have been seized across Spain in a joint Policia Nacional-Europol operation.
Russian investment fund lawyer Sergei Magnitsky died in jail in 2009 after he accused officials of stealing €219 million through tax fraud.
A Policia Nacional statement said: “Laundered money was either sent to the bank accounts of Russian citizens supposedly residing in Spain for them to purchase properties, or sent to real estate agencies with strong ties to the Russian community which would buy real estate on behalf of alleged clients.”
Police are analysing more than a 1,000 Spanish bank accounts to investigate any criminality in what they described as an ‘unprecedented investigation’ in handling a ‘large volume of information’.
€30,000 in cash and jewellery were taken in the Tenerife arrest with no further details provided about the female detainee.
Besides the woman’s home, three other properties linked to her were seized along with two high-end vehicles and the freezing of 19 bank accounts.
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