Spanish Civil Guard has taken down a cryptocurrency-laundering group. These services were allegedly provided by the group that was located in Madrid. According to the Spanish Civil Guard’s MAUNA operation, they found phantom businesses in many countries, including Spain, Belgium and Sweden.
Operation MAUNA: Spanish Civil Guard Stops Crypto Money Laundering Activities
On February 15, the Spanish Civil Guard announced that several individuals were being held in connection to an organisation using scams and cryptocurrency to launder funds. According to the Central Operative Unit of the Civil Guard’s inquiries, the origin of the investigation could have been one of the previously investigated organizations.
MAUNA (as the operation was known) discovered that this criminal group also provided these services to similar groups and served as a hub for laundering funds. The operations started with a small number of people involved in drug trafficking. The group began to change its methods of operation as the operations grew.
This crackdown resulted in eight people being detained as a consequence of nine searches conducted in Madrid and Valladolid. Nine real estate properties were confiscated, 30 bank accounts have been blocked, and more than €300K (almost $340K) were seized. Also, several cold wallets containing cryptocurrency and goods valued at more than €1,000,000 (almost $1,136,000) were retrieved. It also linked to several other phantom corporations in Europe such as Spain, Belgium. Sweden. Germany.
In an attempt to track down some of the money that was being laundered by this group, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency also joined the law enforcement operation.
Be Concerned about Volatility
It appears that the criminal organization took into consideration volatility in cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. Official reports on the operation state that:
To avoid volatility in cryptocurrency’s value before the money laundering operation, the organisation converted the digital asset to USDT currency (Tether) as a way of avoiding this.
Chainalysis reports that although money laundering using crypto remains a relatively small operation, it has seen a 30% increase in these numbers between 2020 and 2021. The crypto-based laundering of $8.6billion was compared with the $800 billion to $2 trillion that is estimated to have been made using fiat currencies.
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