Four Spaniards were imprisoned on 21 May 2019 accused of laundering money from drug trafficking. The authorities seized more than 560,000 euros, firearms and other property from those arrested. The operations were headed by officials of the National Drug Control Agency (DNCD) in coordination with the Attorney General’s Office of the Republic and support from the Spanish authorities.
The DNCD and several prosecutors from the Specialized Anti-Money Laundering Prosecutor’s Office apprehended the Spaniards after intense intelligence work in Santiago and Constanza in La Vega. In a first operation carried out in an apartment of the Las Canas residential complex in Santiago, the head of the structure, a Spaniard, was arrested and 560,160 euros, 1,118,000 Dominican pesos, 889 US dollars, 4,000 Moroccan pesos, two vehicles, two shotguns, a rifle, two pistols were occupied. In the second intervention in Constanza and the Arenoso sector, three other Spaniards were arrested and two greenhouses were occupied, three vehicles, two high-cylinder motorcycles, and other evidence.
The arrest of the Spaniards is due to the cooperation between the government of Spain and the Dominican Republic, following international arrest warrants for two of the accused, under the accusation of trafficking more than 16 tons of hashish from Morocco to Spain from 2017 until July this 2019.
The joint investigation began in May 2018 when Dominican authorities seized 690,400 euros that arrived from Spain in a container of a company linked to the alleged ringleader of the criminal structure.
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DNCD
23 May 2019