70 Spanish nationals have been arrested in a major investigation into tax and fiscal fraud involving a bank in Liechtenstein. Four of the detentions were in Marbella, Fuengirola, Torremolinos and Benalmádena and officers have also visited a private bank located in Nueva Andalucía.
According to official sources some 200 million euros is thought to have been involved in the fraud. The 'Jade-Limusina' investigation started in April when the Tax Agency presented the anti-corruption prosecutor with a report indicating that 198 people could be involved in tax evasion. These were all resident in Spain and are thought to have had dealings with the Liechtenstein Global Trust (LGT).
This is an international case and started off in Germany where some 1,000 people are though to be involved. As it developed it saw the tax authorities in Spain working with colleagues in Australia, Canada, France, Italy, New Zealand, Sweden, the UK and USA. All these countries had instances of their nationals using the same bank to allegedly avoid paying tax to the authorities.
The case in Spain was placed under the wing of the Audiencia Nacional judge Santiago Pedraz who ordered investigations by the tax authority's own team and the anti-corruption squad of the Guardia Civil. This led to raids on around 20 companies and business advisors in Madrid, Barcelona, Málaga and Zaragoza.
The situation of the Nueva Andalucía private bank is not clear. It is believed that the Guardia Civil were at the bank interviewing officials for an hour but no arrests appear to have been made. It is also understood that the same bank could be involved in the German arm of this investigation.
LGT is not only caught up in this fraud investigation. Last week in the USA a hearing of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI) of the US Senate also cast doubt on the bank's operations. In a statement LGT Group asserted that: ''it has always conducted its business in accordance with the applicable legal and regulatory provisions. The data under investigation by the PSI - which is based on the data stolen from LGT Treuhand in 2002 and goes back to the 1970s - is from a time when different regulations applied and when there was no Qualified Intermediary (QI) agreement in place. The specific cases mentioned in the subcommittee's report are dated and do not in any way reflect LGT's current business practices.'' Obviously following the wave of arrests in Spain and the parallel investigations in the USA the bank will once again be under the spotlight.
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