Europol has carried out this Wednesday morning an action in Italy and Spain, where 33 suspects were arrested in a coordinated action against a global criminal network of cocaine trafficking and money laundering.

Suspected perpetrators are of Italian, Albanian, Colombian, Moroccan and Syrian nationality. They had created an international network of companies to launder dirty money.

The criminal network provided a professional criminal service to hide the origin of the income generated by illegal drug trafficking from South America.

With the support of Europol and Eurojust, money laundering specialists from the Italian Guardia di Finanza seized 18.5 million euros of assets as part of the operation.

This structure was used by companies in countries such as China, Turkey and the United States of America, etc. This web of companies allowed organized crime to disguise the nature, source, location, ownership, control, origin and final destination of ill-gotten funds.

To clean the money obtained from drugs, the gang uses a special service called “Black Market Pesos Exchange”, where the risk of losing money is small.