Spanish police arrested four Dominicans for laundering $17 million in euros for recipients in Colombia.
Police officers in Madrid detained two current and two former proprietors of a money transfer and call center establishment in Madrid, all of them nationals of the Dominican Republic.
The arrested owners are charged with laundering money from drugtrafficking- dating back to 2008 – identity theft and falsification of documents. In order to make the illegal transactions the alleged money launderers forged documents or stole the identity of legitimate clients – who had brought their passports to send legal money transfers.
Investigators located 15 legitimate clients whose identities had been stolen and found that of 20,000 money transfers, 12,000 were used to launder funds.
The investigation, which began in the middle of 2011, found suspicious transactions that were sent to Colombia by people of different nationalities.
The amounts exceeded normal averages and there seemed to be no relation between the recipients and the senders.