Joint operation of the Tax Agency and the National Police

• Five people have been arrested and five searches have been carried out in which 70,000 euros, six properties, 16 vehicles and a boat have been seized.
• The organization used front companies, front men, daily banking transactions and other strategies to give the appearance of legality to the assets it acquired with money from drug trafficking.

February 9, 2022.- Customs Surveillance of the Tax Agency, in a joint operation with the National Police, has dismantled a plot to launder money from drug trafficking and tobacco smuggling, consisting of two family groups with criminal records, related by kinship and operations with the 'Clan de los Chestnuts', who operate in the Campo de Gibraltar. Their way of acting consisted of hiding and transforming funds, presumably of illicit origin, through real estate sales, acquisitions of vehicles, boats, financial operations and the use of winning lottery tickets. Local businesses were inserted into them to give them a legal appearance.

The operation began in 2020 as a result of a police operation that involved the dismantling of a criminal organization in which 40 people were arrested for their alleged participation in a money laundering crime derived from drug trafficking.

After various efforts carried out, it was detected that those investigated were using cash using front companies, as well as front men. The multitude of banking transactions that were carried out daily also caught the attention of the investigators, as well as the creation of fixed deadlines in order to mask and give the appearance of legality to the assets acquired with money obtained from criminal activities.

Searches and arrests in La Línea de la Concepción

As a result of these investigations, last week a joint operation was carried out by the Customs Surveillance of the Tax Agency in Algeciras and the National Police Corps, with judicial searches in five homes in La Línea de la Concepción, where to five people of Spanish nationality.

Six properties were seized, 16 vehicles including cars and motorcycles of various ranges, a pleasure boat, 70,000 euros in cash, a high-end mobile phone, two GPS positioning devices for navigation on the high seas, two satellite phones, and a simulated machine gun and a pistol, as well as various documentation.

The investigations, framed within the framework of the Campo de Gibraltar Special Security Plan, remain open in order to study the documentation seized in the registries and assess the constructions detected on intervened rural plots, allegedly carried out with unjustified money or of illegal origin. . The detainees have been handed over to the Investigative Court No. 4 of La Línea.