Russian businessman Kokorev gathered 28 million in real estate to launder income

The Russian businessman based in Gran Canaria, Vladimir Kokorev, sentenced to two years and three months in prison and a 20 million euro fine after confessing that he laundered 58 million undeclared from his business with Equatorial Guinea, managed to gather a real estate heritage of more than 28 million euros, acquisitions that he used to hide his income from the Treasury and that will be confiscated.

This is stated in the agreement reached with the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, fully ratified by the Provincial Court of Las Palmas, whereby the defendants avoid going to prison, but must face cash fines of more than 35 million euros.

In addition to the 20 million euro fine and the two years and three months in prison for Kokorev, a sentence he has already served in pre-trial detention, his wife is sentenced to one year and eleven months in prison and a fifteen million fine, his tax advisor Juan Arencibia to one year in prison plus a 500,000 euro fine and two of his sisters to fines of 10,000 euros each.

As accessory penalties for the crime, the Provincial Court proceeds to confiscate the properties, as they are the product of money laundering.

The sentence, of 58 pages, specifies the confiscation of thirteen real estate properties in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Madrid, Las Rozas and Villaviciosa de Odón (Madrid).

The total value of the real estate acquisitions in Spain amounts to almost 28.5 million euros, which were in the name of the defendants or the instrumental companies of the network they used to move the laundered money, according to the sentence.

The 35 million euros of the fine that the couple has to pay will come from the accounts that were already seized in Switzerland.

According to the proven facts, the businessman, together with Juan Arencibia, laundered 58 million undeclared from his business of buying and selling cargo and passenger ships to the Republic of Equatorial Guinea through a corporate network controlled by Vladimir Kokorev and his wife Yulia Maleeva, sometimes with the tax advisor's sisters as a front.

They also obtained income from technical and commercial assistance to the Republic of Equatorial Guinea and private companies in that country.