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.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
RSS