Biggest European money-laundering bust ever finds Yukos money
Police arrested 41 persons allegedly involved in a money-laundering ring that "washed" more than €250 million ($325 million) in the largest such police operation ever in Europe, in Marbella on Spain's ritzy Costa del Sol. Important quantities of the money involved apparently came from the Russian oil company Yukos, who yesterday in Moscow denied any involvement. More than 300 officers of the National Police took ten months in the investigation; many organized-crime groups on the Costa del Sol used the ring's services, and "many connections have been discovered" with the legal firm Del Valle Abogados. At least nine criminal organizations used the legal office, which has been precincted by the police, as a center for laundering their illegal profits obtained both in Spain and abroad. The Marbella law firm maintained contacts with many individuals wanted in Spain or other countries on charges of such crimes as drug trafficking, homicide, illegal weapons possession, pimping, kidnapping, murder-for-hire, international fraud, tax evasion, and stock fraud. The arrests were made in Cadiz, Alicante, and Malaga provinces; among the 41 are Spaniards, Moroccans, French, Finns, Russians, and Ukrainians. According to the police, the legal firm created a complex web of front corporations that, through the international financial system and holes in corporate and tax law, formed a money-laundering and tax-evading network. They channeled these funds through fiscal paradises or states with either weak regulations or little transparency, which made it almost impossible to identify the real owners of the money. The police stress that the network used, as a front, significant "legal" investment and property management activity.