General News
The Marbella connection
Montse Martín
A new court ruling allows us to examine some of the links between the money-laundering gang in Marbella and other criminal organisations
The partial raising of the sub judice order by a Marbella judge in the so-called ‘White Whale’ money-laundering case has given us a glimpse into some of the links between the Marbella gang and their colleagues abroad. Readers will remember the arrest of a prominent Marbella lawyer and about fifty other people seven months ago, which made headlines all over Europe, followed by the seizure of 251 properties all over the Costa del Sol, including two complete residential developments in La Línea de la Concepción and Manilva, two motor launches, small aircraft and 42 top-of-the-range cars and motorbikes (Rolls Royce, Ferrari, Porsche and Mercedes). The police operation unravelled a network of companies run from the Marbella offices of lawyer Fernando del Valle, through which, it is alleged, more than 250 million euros had been laundered over recent years.
So far, police investigations point to a vast crime network involving at least sixteen different gangs throughout Europe and North Africa, their activities ranging from drugs and arms dealing to prostitution, kidnapping, international fraud, tax evasion, murder and contract killings.
The case has been sub judice up to now, but the partial raising of this order gives us some idea of the extent of the Marbella connection, reaching to Britain, Finland, Sweden, Turkey and Tunisia. It is known, however, that the police are still investigating the links with the Yukos oil company, and with criminal gangs in France, Holland, Russia, Israel and other countries.
TURKEY-TUNISIA
Drug trafficking
Arrested in a shoot-out
According to the police, three of the companies run from the offices of Fernando del Valle in Marbella, Silverkey Properties, Gates Investments and Fun Fair Investments, served to launder money gained from the trafficking of hashish. The foreign connection here was with a Tunisian named Sophiane Hambli, a known drug trafficker arrested in San Pedro de Alcántara during a shoot-out last year. Hambli was on the run from the French police, after having escaped from prison in France, where he was serving time for drug trafficking and other crimes. The laundering of this drug money, it appears, was being done through the Silverkey Properties and Garden Gates Investments companies, and Hambli worked closely with his father-in-law, Mabrouk Chebicheb, who was also detained in the Marbella operation, and his wife. The other company run from Del Valle’s office, Fun Fair Investments, was allegedly linked to Ghali Lamrani and Jamal Zegzaoui, two Moroccans wanted by various police forces for their membership of a cocaine trafficking gang. They had been arrested in the possession of three thousand kilos of cocaine and a thousand kilos of hashish. The Marbella companies had allegedly been used to launder 720,000 euros of illicit gains by this gang.
BRITAIN
Fraud
The circuits fraud
Police investigators in the United Kingdom helped uncover the links between British criminals and the White Whale case in Marbella. The British police were investigating the Eprom Fraud, which is expected to have involved as much as 800,000 euros. They investigated what happened to this money, gained through a fraudulent scheme by which the owners of Jade Technologies Limited, Harvey Levin and his wife, were selling pre-paid electronic circuits to unsuspecting customers at exceptionally low cost. Jade Technologies thus accumulated a fortune with the sale of components that their customers never saw, the components never being manufactured. In the traditional way that this type of business is done, the vast profits were allegedly transferred through an Australian company to the Egremont Corporation, represented in Spain by Fernando del Valle, who in turn transferred them to the Duconte Holdings and Gainford Corporation, also run from the Marbella office. The principal shareholder of the Gainford Corporation was Harvey Levin.
sweden
Tax evasion
Cheating the state
The main character at the other end of the Swedish connection was a Finn named Aimo Veikko Voutilainen. At the time of his arrest as part of the White Whale network, he was owner of a company called AV-Projeckti Service, which, although legally registered in Finland, carried out all its commercial activities from Sweden. The business of the company was the provision of services during holiday periods, but while it existed, the company paid no taxes and employed nobody, which was suspicious, to say the least. Despite this unusual company structure, it earned more than eight million euros between 1994 and 1998, for services that were offered but never delivered. Aimo Veikko Voutilainen was sentenced by a Swedish court to four years in prison, for evasion of taxes and various other financial crimes.
The fraudulent Swedish company, it was discovered by the police in both countries, had been dealing directly with the companies managed by the Del Valle office in Marbella, through a Swiss property company named Rebeca Estates. Its Marbella representatives were listed as Aimo Veikko Voutilainen and Fernando del Valle, and the investigations revealed the link between Del Valle’s office and the financial crimes in Sweden.
finland
Drug trafficking and tax fraud
Expensive tastes
The Spanish tax authorities first began to take an interest in the professional activities of businessman Aki Johannes Kujala, and began to suspect his involvement in the White Whale case, when he declared his annual income at only 50,000 euros, while living a life of luxury and expensive style. The 41-year-old Finn, a resident on the Costa del Sol, had already been investigated by the police for money-laundering and financial crimes in his own country on various occasions, and had been convicted by a Finnish court in 1997.
Kujala held shares in a total of 21 companies, ranging from a gymnasium to real estate and audio-visual businesses. He lived a fast life-style, both figuratively and literally, owning a number of luxury cars, including Ferraris and top-of-the-range Mercedes, and was also the owner of a luxury yacht. He owned a 50 per cent stake in Gestierra, a company partly owned by Francisco Calle, brother-in-law of the former mayor of Manilva, Pedro Tirado, who was jailed two weeks ago on various counts of fraud. The Finnish connection was through a company called Royal Marbella Estates, to which the mayor of Manilva had sold his signature on a re-zoning order, favourable, of course, to the company in question. Aki Johannes Kujala had purchased a number of plots on the land which was later re-zoned.
Kujala’s partner in the Marbella gymnasium was Italian Luigi Protani, who was wanted by the Italian police for drug trafficking, and who had been arrested in Spain in 2001 and subsequently handed over to the Italians for his involvement in an international drug ring. Protani has been in prison in Rome since 2003, convicted of having taken part in the sale of 200 kilos of Venezuelan cocaine to an Italian gang.
The police also discovered that another partner in the gymnasium was Moroccan Ghali Lamrani, who lived in the same building as Kujala. Lamrani has since ended up in a Moroccan prison for his part in a drugs deal in which 350 kilos of cocaine were seized by Dutch police in Rotterdam port. Lamrani’s name was also linked to the Fun Fair Investments and Gavaid Corporation companies run by Fernando del Valle.
Lamrani was also in partnership with another Moroccan, Otham Soussi, who was tried and convicted of money-laundering, tax evasion and smuggling by the Audiencia Nacional (Central Criminal Court) in Madrid in 2002. Police investigators found that the Aki Kujala companies were paying out more than they were taking in, and could not account for the origin of this money, much of which was coming from abroad. But apart from their questionable business practice, there was also the direct relationship, both as partners and on a personal level, between them and the Marbella money-laundering network.
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