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Dozens arrested in Europe-wide mafia crackdown

16 March 2010 04:23 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Dozens of people have been arrested across Europe in a major crackdown on Eastern European mafias, APA reports quoting timesonline.co.uk web-page.
At least 24 were detained in Spain and another 45 were arrested in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France and Italy.
The suspects were said to be members of Georgian and Russian crime gangs. All are accused of drugs and arms trafficking, money laundering, extortion and conspiracy to murder.
Spanish anti-corruption authorities, who led the operation, said that the gangs were also involved in money laundering, extortion and other crimes in Britain, Ireland Sweden, Belgium and Turkey.
Some were also said to have links to criminal gangs in Colombia.
Those arrested in Spain were mostly said to be "foot soldiers".
â€œWe are not going to find great mansions nor enormous quantities of money, as in other operations, because this is an organisation which operated at a more basic level, but they did it in various European countries," a Spanish police source said.
â€œThese people were ready to kill if it was necessary."
The arrests in Spain were made in Barcelona, Valencia, Madrid and Bilbao.
Three suspects were arrested near Paris. They were accused of theft and receiving stolen goods, police said.
Spanish investigators said phone taps revealed all the suspects arrested had a connection to Zakhar Kalashov, an alleged Russian mafia boss who is on trial in Spain.
Kalashov, 50, is accused of money laundering, arms and drugs smuggling and kidnapping but earlier this month was released on â‚¬300,000 (Â£273,000) conditional bail pending the verdict.
He was arrested by Spanish police in an armed operation in the United Arab Emirates in 2005 and had been held in a maximum security jail.
The arrests, carried out at the weekend, are the latest stage in an operation against Eastern European crime gangs in Spain, which began in 2005 with the arrest of 28 suspects.
In 2008, Gennadios Petrov, an alleged head of the Russian mafia in Spain, was arrested at his mansion in Calvi, one of the most exclusive villages in Majorca.
With Ferraris and Bentleys in the drive and Spanish royalty for neighbours, Petrov was said to operate his criminal empire from his â‚¬20 million villa on the island.
Spanish prosecutors allege Petrov is the head of the Tambovskaya-Malyshevskaya mafia, which is based in St Petersburg. Police describe the gang as one of the four biggest in the world.
Petrov was charged along with 17 others with money laundering, murder, extortion, drug dealing, illicit association, falsification of documents and tax fraud. He is awaiting trial.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian mafia exploited lax Spanish property laws and limited police resources to launder millions in property deals through bogus firms.