His arrest followed a lengthy investigation led by the Spanish Guardia Civil alongside the British National Crime Agency (NCA), the Dutch National Police and the Irish Garda. Eleven property searches were carried out in Spain and the UK, Europol said, and two of the man’s suspected associates had also been arrested.
The authorities believe the group shifted more than 200 million euros to criminal organisations using a transfer system known as hawala that operates outside of, or parallel to, traditional financial channels and during which no physical money actually moves.
Vodka profits
Using shell companies, the police said, the main gang members in Spain had created a brand of vodka promoted in nightclubs and restaurants in the Costa del Sol to disguise the source of their earnings. They also are thought to have founded a company in Britain with ties to another in Gibraltar to obscure how they were handling illegal profits.
One suspect is said to have managed a car dealership that provided vehicles with hidden compartments for the group to transport large amounts of cash.
Value of electronic verification
The news underscores the need to properly identify who is moving money and where.
Martin Cheek, managing director of SmartSearch, a West Yorkshire-based provider of anti-money laundering (AML) software, said the arrests showed “the determination of authorities all across Europe to crack down on serious fraud and financial crime. But while this is a huge win, there’s still plenty of work to do and businesses need to remain vigilant to this very real threat.”
The NCA, he said, estimates that as much as £90bn is being laundered in the UK.
“As the landscape continues to change and criminals find more innovative ways to filter money, that means ditching the manual paper checks of the past,” Cheek said. “As few people can spot fake documents, manual checks of passports and driving licences just aren’t robust enough, so it’s imperative that companies switch to digital onboarding and electronic verification.”
