The Vitaldent case, baptized by the Police as "Operation Topolino", has reached Lanzarote. Judge María Isabel Serrano has decided to send Javier Arteaga and his brother, Óscar Arteaga, who expanded the business to this island, to provisional prison. Among other things, the Arteaga brothers are the administrators of the company Micalmar Lanzarote SL, with which they brought this franchise to Arrecife.
According to the newspaper El Español, Javier Arteaga belonged to the "top management" of Vitaldent and the Prosecutor's Office points him out as "the trusted man" of the president and main defendant in this case, Ernesto Colman. At the time, Arteaga held management positions in the company and currently manages 13 Vitaldent clinics open in different parts of Spain.
In the operation, 13 people have been arrested in the Community of Madrid and one in Torrevieja (Alicante), of which six have been sent to provisional prison considering that there is a risk of flight. The judge accuses them of crimes against the Public Treasury, continued crime of money laundering, a crime of forgery in official and commercial documents, a crime of fraud and misappropriation, an accounting crime and a crime of criminal organization.
The investigation has been carried out by the Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit (Udef) of the National Police, which considers that Colman created a fraudulent system with the help of the rest of the defendants, carrying out a fraud that could have reached 10 million euros. Among other things, according to the police, the company demanded that its franchisees pay 10% of the amount agreed for the franchise in cash.
Arteaga, alleged "collector" of the money
According to national media and agencies, the investigating judge points to the administrator of Micalmar Lanzarote SL, Javier Arteaga, as the alleged "collector" of the money that Vitaldent received illegally. "He would have established collection rounds through the different clinics, to collect cash, either going himself, or relying on his brother Óscar in his control visits to his franchises, spread throughout the national territory or taking advantage of meetings with the delegates of the same every three months", points out the newspaper El Español.
It even points out that in his statement in court, Arteaga admitted the collection of money in black from his clinics and payments in black for various items such as bonuses, refurbishment of premises and part of the payment of the fee for advertising and billing.
His brother and partner, Óscar Arteaga, is also of special relevance in the investigation, in whose home the agents would have found 615,000 euros in cash. In total, in the different searches carried out during the operation, the police seized 1.2 million euros in cash, as well as a plane valued at one million euros, 36 cars, several of them high-end, and several farms. In Javier Arteaga's home, the agents found 66,000 euros in cash.
