Havana/Gold and nickel was the payment that wanted to square a money laundering organization with the Cuban regime. In return, explains a Published note This Wednesday in The countrythe Russian origin mafia would ride a solar panel park on the island. However, the plan fell last January, when the network was dismantled by the Spanish authorities and 14 people were arrested.
In a statement, the Spanish Ministry of Interior revealed the link of the Russian organization with the island, where the network had “invest” and had maintained contact with the Cuban authorities to close the deal. “For this business, still incipient, they had hired a Spanish lawyer who presumed in their conversations to carry out the issues of a well -known Spanish politician, according to sources close to the investigation. The lawyer is not among those arrested, ”collects the Spanish newspaper.
According to the Ministry, the mafia functioned as a “multinational”, which in addition to whitening capital and moving a month “several million euros”, had as customers “drug lords settled in Spain” that handle albanesas, Moroccan, Serbias, Serbias, Serbias, Serbias, Armenias, Chinese, Ukrainian and Colombian, as well as the Maffia Mocro, of Maghreb origin and with a presence in the Netherlands.
The operation began in 2023, when the authorities began to notice the “constant and systematic activity of collection and delivery of cash”
The operation, called Strongbox, began in 2023, when the Spanish authorities began to notice the “constant and systematic activity of collection and delivery of cash.”
The Russian organization had a “high professionalism, with sophistication never seen before, behaving like an authentic multinational capital laundering,” Interior described. That is why its clients chose it to bleach and move large amounts of money from their residences and prevent them from being discovered by the police.
They managed to close deals and gain the confidence of these criminal groups for their strict “protocol”, with which the “ATMs” were forced to document all capital movements, charges and receipts with photographs. If the modus operandithe organization itself discounted 5% of the administrator’s salary.
The alleged members of the Network are Russians based for a long time in the country and had offices in communities such as Madrid, Marbella and Malaga – where nine records were made and a million euros were seized in cash and a cryptocurrency purse – from which They did business. For “security reasons” and to be close to their clients, the authorities add, they often changed cities and premises.
The network also had operations in Netherlands, Estonia, Lithuania and Italy
The network also had operations in the Netherlands, Estonia, Lithuania and Italy, and in each enclave they placed “ATMs” – the ones in charge of collecting the money and moving it – which also rotated between cities and even from one country to another. During the operation, three of these administrators were arrested, two of Russian origin and one Armenian, which had already been previously located in other European countries and Thailand.
To move the funds, the group relied on the Hawalaan informal system that allows the sending of money without taking it out of the country. As detailed inner, the transfer were constant and could be up to 300,000 euros. In return, the Russian network requested between 2% and 3% of the funds it moved.
In addition to the three ATMs, a Spanish policeman from Ayamonte, in Huelva, was also arrested and imprisoned, on the border with Portugal, which provided the group documents to reside in the country or move through Europe. It also facilitated and accelerated the processing of this type of documentation for the clients of the Russian organization. He even manipulates the records so that those involved appeared as Ukrainian citizens and benefit from the temporal protection status.
In addition to the three ATMs, a Spanish policeman from Ayamonte was also arrested and imprisoned
Last summer, several representatives of an Armenian criminal organization were forced to travel to Spain due to an attempted robbery that their members perpetrated in one of the Russian offices. Interior explained that, by noticing suspicious movements, the “cashier” of that office – all of them have cash counting machines and safes within soundproofed cabinets – moved more than half a million euros to another enclave.
The assailants found nothing, but the attempted robbery generated friction between both criminal groups, which gathered to file roughness. After these obvious movements, neither the encrypted phones, nor the security measures stopped the fall in disgrace of the Russian mafia.
