The Spanish police arrested Russian citizens who extorted large sums of money from their wealthy compatriots.
Provided by Deutsche Welle
The Spanish National Police (NPI) arrested seven Russian citizens who had been extorting money from compatriots who settled in Madrid and Malaga for a number of years. This was reported to DW on Friday, January 29, by the representative of the NPI press service Seli Martinez. According to her information, the extortionists “had compromising information on their victims,” which they used in their illegal activities. Those arrested are charged with such acts as “extortion, money laundering and membership in a criminal group.” Their names, at the request of the court, were not disclosed.
On pain of being deported to Russia
According to the NPI, the “modus operandi” of the group, which has been monitored since the beginning of 2019, was different depending on the object of the extortion. However, each time they “had complete information about their victims”: their previous professional activities in Russia, business violations, problems with the tax service and law enforcement agencies, alleged connections with criminal structures, personal life, etc.
Most often, having dumbfounded another object of blackmail with such knowledge, the extortionists, using their connections in Russia, threatened to open criminal cases against the victim, which is usually fraught with an order for expulsion from Spain. The alternative is to pay half a million euros.
In other cases, the victim was shown documents allegedly already prepared by Russian law enforcement agencies for shipment to Spain. One of the group's accomplices was even caught with a 20,000 euro deposit received from a compatriot under a promise to stop the extradition procedure in Russia. The blackmailer did not live in Spain – he came from Moscow specifically to receive money.
Profitable fishing
The NPI press service emphasizes that the fake Russian documents used by the extortionists “could not be distinguished from the genuine” even for experts, that is, they were produced on official letterheads, signed and sealed. In addition, the success of the blackmail was facilitated by the complete possession of information about their victims by the members of the group, which, as the Spaniards claim, “from the database of the Russian police.”
As the NPI notes, all those arrested lived in Spain, thanks to their fishing, “on a grand scale, not hesitating to publicly demonstrate their financial capabilities.” During the search, tens of thousands of cash, expensive cars and jewelry were seized from them.
Meanwhile, when asked by DW, to what extent the arrested, who had the above documents and information, were connected, in the opinion of the Spanish side, with Russian law enforcement agencies, the NPI representative replied that she was “not authorized to give such explanations.”
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Author: Victor Cheretsky, Madrid
