Following this announcement, law enforcement across the region of Europe has cracked down on a criminal network led by two Ukrainian brothers. The initiative was coordinated by Spanish, Cypriot, German, and French authorities, with support from Europol and Eurojust, and led to the arrest of multiple suspects and the seizure of several criminal assets, following raids conducted in October 2024.
The operation took place for several months and arrested total of 23 suspects, the seizure of EUR 35.7 million in cash, bank accounts, and cryptocurrencies, as well as 36 vehicles, watches, jewelry, and real estate.
The organised criminal network has been providing cash courier and underground banking solutions to other criminal networks, being composed of Ukrainian, Armenian, Azerbaijani, and Kazakh nationals. Chinese actors were also part of this criminal network, providing money laundering services as well. Moreover, this catalog of offerings was used by various Russian-speaking and Asian criminal actors engaged in drug trafficking, tax evasion, or the smuggling of illicit goods, as most of these initiatives were committed in the region of Spain.
The suspects are believed to have abused the temporary protection status granted to Ukrainian refugees by the EU since 2022. Taking advantage of the exceptions put in place to facilitate the transfer of money between jurisdictions, the criminal network moved huge amounts of cash without being questioned in detail or scrutinised during customs checks. At the same time, in the process of declaring the cash sums as part of their own patrimony, the money mules, some of whom were family members of the criminal leaders, travelled regularly between Spain, Cyprus, France, and other regions.
Furthermore, once several cash couriers started to be arrested, the criminal network adapted and moved from significant physical cash movements to the cryptocurrency sphere, making the money transfers harder to detect by authorities.
Every day we send out a free e-mail with the most important headlines of the last 24 hours.
Subscribe now