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The daughter of a close friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who served as a politician in the country's legislative assembly between 2007-11, and millionaires on the Forbes list were among their targets. They were looking for public profiles, their financial solvency and connections to legally dubious activities that could lead to criminal proceedings. Once the ideal victim had been selected, they would "fabricate" criminal cases to extort money from them. The members of this plot, led by high-ranking Russian officials from the ministries of the interior and justice operating from Marbella, appeared in the dock this Tuesday after the parties had reached a plea bargain. They have thus acknowledged their involvement in the events and the charges have considerably reduced the sentence request.
The six defendants, based on the Costa del Sol, have agreed with the prosecution's account of the facts, which considers all of them guilty of organised crime, and some also of money laundering, forgery and extortion. Consequently, the public prosecutor's office has reduced the total prison sentence requested by more than 50 years, from 75 to 22 years. The maximum is eight and a half years for the one regarded as the ringleader for operations in Spain, and the minimum is seven months for another defendant. In terms of fines, the prosecution has requested over four million euros be paid by two of the accused.
According to the public prosecutor's office, the network's criminal scheme consisted of falsely implicating certain persons in criminal proceedings in order to extort money from them. They demanded large sums of money from them to 'close' the fictitious case. Failure to comply led to threats of imprisonment in Russia. In order to demand such large sums of money, they gathered a "huge and compromising" amount of information on their targets.
The prosecution further claims that Halit S. was the plot's ringleader in Spain, operating from Marbella. The accused already holds an extensive criminal record: eight different identities throughout his career, five arrests for prostitution, forgery, fraud, fraud on public property and illegal detention, and a pre-trial detention that led to an extradition request by the Swiss authorities.
His wife, also indicted in the case, was in charge of "safeguarding" the victims' sensitive information and was willing to appear as the owner of digital email addresses, telephone devices, accounts or loan agreements to conceal the fact that her husband was the one managing the children and thus safeguard their anonymity.
The prosecutor's office also points out in its charge sheet - to which SUR has had access - that Russian officials from the Ministry of the Interior and members of the Federal Security Service (FSB) were identified by the victims and yet have not been prosecuted by their country's authorities.
"These crimes are very serious and so are the consequences of the crime. If a benefit is sought, one must provide restitution for the consequences to restore the harm caused. It is the job of those convicted to assume the consequences of their crimes and that is what the rehabilitative effect consists of", added the presiding judge of the eighth section of Malaga's provincial court.
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