MADRID (Reuters) – A woman has been arrested as part of a probe into a crime gang suspected of laundering dirty money linked to the 219 million euro ($233 million) Magnitsky corruption case in Russia, Spain and the Europol international police body said on Wednesday.
Spanish police said the suspect was a woman, whose name has not been disclosed, and that Spain was looking to seize three properties, two high-end cars and 19 bank accounts linked to the suspect.
Russian investment fund lawyer Sergei Magnitsky died in jail in 2009 after he accused officials of stealing $230 million through tax fraud. He was posthumously convicted of tax evasion.
Europol said that the individual had been arrested in the Canary Islands, and that a total of 75 properties have been seized so far across Spain for a cumulative value of 25 million euros, as part of the probe into the gang.
Europol said the probe had identified a group of individuals who were all Russians with little or no ties to Spain.
“The dirty money was either sent to the bank accounts of these Russian citizens supposedly residing in Spain for them to purchase properties, or sent to Spanish real estate agencies with strong ties to the Russian community which would buy real estate on behalf of alleged clients,” added Europol.
($1 = 0.9396 euros)
(Reporting by Emma Pinedo in Madrid and Sudip Kar-Gupta in Paris; Editing by Alison Williams and Tomasz Janowski)