Spain’s “biggest” money-laundering case fizzles out

What has been billed for the last six years as Spain’s biggest ever money-laundering investigation fizzled out on Wednesday when a judge in Málaga handed down minimum jail sentences to the ringleader of the operation and four other co-defendants while acquitting 14 others.

Fernando del Valle, a 62-year-old Chilean-born lawyer, pinned as the mastermind behind the Ballena Blanca (White Whale) operation, was ordered to serve a jail sentence of six years and three months and pay a 3.5-million-euro fine. His main co-defendant, Tunisian-born drug-trafficker Sophiane Hambli, was sentenced to three years and fined 1.5 million euros.

Prosecutor Antonio Morales, who was asking for a 30-year sentence for Del Valle and higher sentences for the others, said that he will study whether to appeal the sentences before the Supreme Court.

Authorities were able to trace some 12 million euros Del Valle had helped launder through his law office in Marbella but said they believed he may have helped launder up to 250 million euros in proceeds from different criminal activities.

At the center of the prosecution's case were scores of phone taps and other surveillance recordings that defense lawyers successfully challenged during the year-long trial. The court decided to suppress the tapes despite the the prosecutor's arguments to present them as evidence.

Del Valle, who arrived in Spain in the late 1970s, set up scores of shell companies in different tax havens around the world in which he helped criminals launder their profits, investigators said.

Among those also sentenced was a Finnish couple, also given three years, and Hambli’s wife, María Dolores León Pérez, who was given a one-year jail sentence.