Spanish police arrested 41 people and cracked an operation to launder up to US$336 million which may have links to the embattled Russian Yukos oil company, the Interior Ministry said.
The raids followed 10 months of investigation. Those arrested in Spain's southern Costa del Sol region included Spanish, French, Finnish, Russian and Ukrainian citizens. The ministry said the operation was Spain's biggest crackdown on money laundering ever.
Police also seized a ship, two small planes and 42 luxury cars, the ministry added Saturday.
The statement said that Spanish judicial authorities worked closely with the Russians on the case, dubbed "White Whale," which involved more than 300 police.
The ministry said police had been able to determine the possible destination for money stemming from a massive illegal siphoning of funds originating at the Russian oil firm Yukos, allegedly diverted to a Dutch company and then reinvested in a Spanish unit.
Police also found a connection between a group of lawyers in the Marbella area with other organized crime groups involved in drug and arms trafficking and prostitution.
Marbella and the Costa del Sol as a whole is a base for mobs dealing in everything from stolen cars to illegal weapons. In 2003, police broke up 53 criminal gangs who were involved in money laundering, drug and weapons trafficking.
Yukos denied reports that it might have been involved in money laundering in Spain.
Yukos spokesman Alexander Shadrin told Ekho Moskvy radio that such reports were "nonsense."
"The only place left to look is on Mars -- did we launder something there?" Ekho Moskvy quoted Shadrin as saying, in a sarcastic reference to the Russian government's campaign of accusations and tax claims against the beleaguered company.
According to the radio station, the Russian prosecutor general's office declined to comment on the reports, but said that it had not contacted Spanish authorities about the issue. Russian prosecutors could not immediately be reached for comment Saturday.
Yukos has been targeted by Russian authorities in a legal campaign widely seen as punishment by President Vladimir Putin's Kremlin for its founder and ex-CEO Mikhail Khodorkvosky's economic clout and political ambitions.
The company's biggest production unit was sold by the state in a disputed December auction to pay part of the US$28 billion authorities say Yukos owes in back taxes.
Khodorkovsky has been jailed since his October 2003 arrest, and is being tried on fraud and tax-evasion charges separate from the claims against the company.
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