Alex Trelinski
A RUSSIAN mafia group that laundered millions of euros for years in Spain for international criminal gangs, boasted of its contacts with ‘well-known Spanish politicians’ to help its activities.
Among the clients were big criminal outfits operating in Spain and further afield including the Serbian and Albanian cartels, the Mocro Maffia, the Colombian cartels, the Armenian mafia, clans from Ukraine and even some from China.
A Policia Nacional investigation that brought down the gang in January discovered that they phoned Cuban authorities about plans to build a solar energy farm on the island and told them they were close to several Spanish political leaders.
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Operation Strongbox uncovered the Cuban solar plant plan where the island’s government would have paid the mafia gang in large quantities of gold and nickel.
The investigation against the mafia crew discovered a sophisticated organisation that acted as ‘a genuine multinational money laundering company’, according to the Policia Nacional.
14 people have been arrested and properties searched in Madrid, Malaga, Marbella, Torremolinos, Coin, and Ayamonte as well as Lisbon in Portugal, with €1 million in cash seized.
A Policia Nacional officer from Huelva was on the mafia’s payroll and provided Spanish residency documents to its members, saying they needed asylum due to the Ukraine war.
He also had ‘political contacts’, offering the mafia investments on the Huelva coast in land and hotel complexes.
It’s been calculated that the Russian network laundered roughly €2 million monthly for its clients, and was brought down after a two-year police probe.
The Policia Nacional monitored several individuals from Russian organised crime based in different areas of Spain.
They soon discovered that they maintained a constant and systematic activity of collecting and delivering cash to people of different nationalities, with the money all illegally obtained.
Gangs such as the Mocro Maffia or the Colombian cartels moved their capital around the world thanks to the Russians based in Spain.
The network mafia charged a commission for each transaction that needed laundering of between 2% and 3%.
As the investigation progressed, the full extent of the activities of the mafia was discovered.
Its footprint extended to many countries including the Netherlands, Estonia, Lithuania and Italy.
In Spain, they had offices in different cities, each of them managed by a ‘cashier’ who was in charge of making daily cash transactions, sometimes as much as €300,000.
The police investigation worked out a monthly movement of several million euros in Spain alone.
Each ‘cashier’ had a security safe, a high-capacity money counter and a soundproof cabinet where the counter could be kept to muffle its characteristic noise when counting banknotes.
Every time they made a money delivery, the ‘cashiers’ had to document the operation with a receipt for the mafia bosses.
They even set up a routine for each ‘cashier’ when they set up a base in a new city, and included fines if the rules were broken.
Security was strict, with houses and cars changed every few months and some ‘safe houses’ were used just for business.
The ‘cashiers’ also changed residence from time to time, instructing those who were going to replace them in their job on the proper way to make deliveries and keep money receipts.
Authorities discovered that all of the Russian mafia gang members had encrypted mobile phones linked to each other, and were simultaneously blocked if one of its members was arrested by the police.
