At 45, sharp-suited Chinese art dealer and businessman Gao Ping (高平) has climbed high in life, even being photographed with Spain’s King Juan Carlos and China’s President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤).
Now he is in a cell in Madrid, waiting to go before a judge, accused of heading a gang that laundered millions of euros, officials and media reports said — though his defenders said he was an easy target.
A police official said on Friday that Gao was among more than 80 people arrested this week in “Operation Emperor” and that he was suspected of being the leader of the network busted in the series of raids.
He was expected to go before the judge yesterday, a judicial source added, after 19 suspects who were due to be questioned on Friday — mostly Chinese suspected of laundering money.
The judge will rule on possible bail and whether to keep Gao in detention.
Spanish television broadcast pictures of Gao, dressed in a brown leather jacket, covering his face as police detained him and searched his Gao Magee Gallery in an arty area of downtown Madrid.
Police vans surrounded his white-pillared mansion in the posh western Madrid suburb of Somosaguas.
“People who know him tell me they are very surprised,” said Jorge Garcia, a Madrid-based consultant who chairs a Spanish-Chinese chamber of commerce and works with investors in both countries.
“He is a businessman who started from the bottom, with a small shop, and his business grew. He was a philanthropist who helped a lot of people in need and was the face of Spanish art in China in recent years,” he added. “He seems to have been a humble and much-loved person.”
Over 500 police took part in “Operation Emperor.” They seized 10 million euros (US$13 million) in cash in raids across the country as well as some 200 vehicles, guns, jewels and works of art.
Top anti-corruption prosecutor Antonio Salinas said the network laundered between 200,000 euros and 300,000 euros a year, dodging taxes, bribing officials and forging documents.
He said the racket was made up of traders who sold contraband goods in Spain, laundered the money and transferred it to China.
The Spanish National Court, which ran a two-year investigation, said the gang also channeled money from rackets involving prostitution and extortion to tax havens with the help of Spanish and Israeli intermediaries.
Spanish newspapers cited unnamed sources saying his vast network used hitmen and thugs to intimidate late-payers, though police and prosecutors refused to comment on these details pending the hearings.
El Mundo newspaper cited National Court documents, which have not been publicly released, saying the gang used a unit called the Shangdon Group “which worked on collecting payments using violence when necessary.”
Defenders of Gao Ping say Spain’s big Chinese community, which owns many wholesale distributors and bargain-basement shops in major cities, is an easy target at a time when Spaniards are angry with the government in a bitter recession.
In its efforts to fix its public finances, the Spanish government has announced measures to recover tax revenues which included an amnesty for some back taxes owed on big fortunes.
The government said the money-laundering harmed the Spanish economy.
“The government doesn’t want to touch the big tax evaders, because they are friends of the state — bankers, politicians, businessmen,” Garcia said.
“Blaming the Chinese mafia for the fact there are 5 million unemployed in Spain is a bit ridiculous,” he said.
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
Australians were downloading virtual private networks (VPNs) in droves, while one of the world’s largest porn distributors said it was blocking users from its platforms as the country yesterday rolled out sweeping online age restriction. Australia in December became the first country to impose a nationwide ban on teenagers using social media. A separate law now requires artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot services to keep certain content — including pornography, extreme violence and self-harm and eating disorder material — from minors or face fines of up to A$49.5 million (US$34.6 million). The country also joined Britain, France and dozens of US states requiring
Hungarian authorities temporarily detained seven Ukrainian citizens and seized two armored cars carrying tens of millions of euros in cash across Hungary on suspicion of money laundering, officials said on Friday. The Ukrainians were released on Friday, following their detention on Thursday, but Hungarian officials held onto the cash, prompting Ukraine to accuse Hungary’s Russia-friendly government of illegally seizing the money. “We will not tolerate this state banditism,” Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said. The seven detained Ukrainians were employees of the Ukrainian state-owned Oschadbank, who were traveling in the two armored cars that were carrying the money between Austria and
Kosovar President Vjosa Osmani on Friday after dissolving the Kosovar parliament said a snap election should be held as soon as possible to avoid another prolonged political crisis in the Balkan country at a time of global turmoil. Osmani said it is important for Kosovo to wrap up the upcoming election process and form functional institutions for political stability as the war rages in the Middle East. “Precisely because the geopolitical situation is that complex, it is important to finish this electoral process which is coming up,” she said. “It is very hard now to imagine what will happen next.” Kosovo, which declared
RSS