A NARCO money laundering scheme using Chinese-run shops selling ever-day household items allegedly funnelled more than €22 million in cash through Malaga province alone.
Spanish police believe the apparently ordinary bazaars, import stores and warehouse-style outlets – many of them in and around Malaga’s busy Guadalhorce industrial estate next to the airport – were secretly acting as ‘shadow banks’ for a violent Albanian drug gang running large indoor marijuana plantations across Spain.
Investigators say more than 200 cash drops took place in the province, with Chinese-run shops acting as cover points where drug money was delivered, counted and redistributed.
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The stores, which on the surface sold clothes, household items, electronics or general goods, allegedly functioned as informal banking hubs for the gang – taking in packed bundles of notes in Spain and releasing corresponding funds in China or elsewhere through clandestine cross-border networks.
The Costa del Sol also served as a coordination hub, with financial orders allegedly issued from Málaga and its metropolitan area to support indoor grow-houses in other provinces.
At the top of the structure, investigators believe, were two senior Albanian bosses working with two established Chinese coordinators who allegedly managed a “large portfolio” of Asian shops nationwide prepared to move criminal cash.
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Police describe the Albanian faction as “highly dangerous”, with access to firearms and a high likelihood of flight.
The inquiry suggests the laundering network has been operating since 2021 and may have moved more than €60 million nationwide.
Similar cash-collection routines were detected in Barcelona, Valencia, Madrid, Alicante and Sevilla, but Malaga appears to have been one of the main financial centres for the operation.
By late 2023, almost 30 people had been arrested, and police seized €615,000 in cash along with more than €400,000 in luxury watches and jewellery.
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In a separate operation tied to the same network, officers in Madrid recovered 64.9kg of marijuana and arrested two Albanian suspects in Torrejón de Ardoz.
Despite the scale of the case, at least one alleged ringleader – a Chinese national – has been released while the investigation continues.
The defence acknowledges that “hundreds of people” are now under judicial scrutiny.
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The case has unfolded alongside related investigations in Madrid and Torremolinos involving kidnapping, firearms offences and forged identity documents, all pointing to a criminal ecosystem far more embedded in Spain’s everyday commercial landscape than previously understood.
The instruction phase remains open as police continue tracking the network’s financial routes and its links to marijuana farms, cash couriers and Chinese retail businesses up and down the country.
More arrests are expected.
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