The Sixth Section of the Provincial Court of Las Palmas has rejected the request of the defense of Vladimir and Julia Maleeva Kokorev, a married couple of Russian citizens nationalized in Spain, for their trial for an alleged crime of money laundering to continue in the National Court.
The Chamber has notified the parties this Wednesday that it does not give rise to its "inhibition in favor" of the National Court. The defense argued that the Provincial Court is "incompetent" to judge a multiple crime of money laundering that would have been committed abroad. In addition, it intended to unify this process with the case for the crime of illicit trafficking of weapons that is already in the National Court.
Specifically, the case studies the laundering of more than 100 million euros from the illegal trafficking of weapons in Equatorial Guinea and includes three other defendants. Among them a lawyer, accused of being the architect of the 45 companies that the Kokorev family allegedly created in Las Palmas to launder money and two of the sisters of that lawyer who would have acted as front men.
The Provincial Court understands that there are two phases and two different procedural procedures, the one that follows for arms trafficking and the one that follows in the Canary Islands for money laundering. At the time in which it resolves that if the National Court assumed the cause, it would incur in late inhibitions and would lengthen the resolution of the cause in time.
Thus, it has also stressed that this request "lacks justification at this time", since six years have passed since the actions began and 16 since the procedure began in March 2008.
The two accusations, the one represented by the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office and the Association Pro Human Rights of Spain, which denounced the case in 2009, demand sentences of between eight and five years in prison for the accused for money laundering and fines of up to 240 million euros, in the case of Vladimir Kokorev, who is attributed to have generated an illicit wealth of at least 120 million euros, between 1999 and 2014 from the illicit trade of military defense and dual-use material that he sold to Equatorial Guinea, through different companies, one of them with headquarters in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
