CRIME ON THE COSTAS is pleased to provide this opportunity to share information, experiences and observations about what's in the news. We encourage lively, open debate on the issues of the day, and ask that you refrain from profanity, hate speech, personal comments and remarks that are off point. Thank you for taking the time to offer your thoughts.
Top Spanish tourist resort Salou, in Tarragona, has passed local bylaws which stop men walking shirtless through several of the town’s central streets and public places. Women are restricted from wearing bikinis in the same streets as well as in public buildings such as the library, market, civil centre etc.
A statement from the Town Hall said that they wanted to establish a balance between the rights and obligations of the citizens, and it comes three months after groups of British students brought poor and drunken behaviour to the resort in ‘Saloufest’.
The motion, passed in the local council, acts against ‘behaviour which alters the public peace and order’ and plans fines for those to break the regulations from 100 - 300 €.
A court in the Spanish city of Malaga sentenced an elderly Finnish couple to three years and three months imprisonment after finding them guilty of engaging in money laundering for several years on Spain’s Costa del Sol.
The two were also ordered to pay EUR 1.3 million in fines.
The court found that Aimo Veikko Voutilainen and Maria Leena Voutilainen had laundered nearly EUR 800,000 through real estate deals in Marbella and Fuengirola since the mid-1990s.
The sentences are part of a large money laundering trial in the Costa del Sol, where there were a total of 19 defendants. Only five were convicted.
The money laundering scheme was hatched in a legal office in Marbella, where the Voutilainen’s were customers.
The scheme unravelled in 2005. At that time dozens of people were arrested in an operation called “White Whale”. In addition, luxury cars, properties, and works of art were confiscated.
The court found that Aimo Voutilainen, with help from his wife, had moved proceeds from tax crimes committed in Sweden abroad. He had been convicted of tax crime in Sweden in 1998.
A third Finn, a Helsinki businessman known for living a life of luxury in Marbella, was acquitted in the case.
The court did not find that there was sufficient evidence that the man had laundered his acquaintances’ drug money.