Four arrested at Madrid airport under suspicion of transporting millions in counterfeit Venezuelan currency

The Madrid Civil Guard Command detained four people at the Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas Airport for allegedly illegally introducing 6,000 million counterfeit Venezuelan bolivars, only some of which was declared.

The money, which totals $163 million in U.S. dollars, was divided into more than one million counterfeit bills, arrived last April on a flight from Colombia with falsified documentation indicating that the bills were numismatic in nature, reported the Madrid Civil Guard Command.

Authorities soon learned that the main defendant had a business in the Spanish city of Valencia that he used as a front to launder the importation of the banknotes.

Agents from the Madrid Fiscal and Border Unit contacted the Venezuelan authorities, who confirmed that this type of exports are not authorized by the Central Bank of Venezuela and therefore counterfeit.

After confirmation, the Civil Guard established a surveillance device around the merchandise and observed that one of the four suspects - some of them members of the same family - would transport the money in a rented vehicle to a home on the outskirts of Valencia.

Subsequently, the bills left the numismatic store and, in this way, they obtained economic benefits, since the suspects declared a lower number of the money at the Spanish Customs and, therefore, paid less for its export.

España: Arrestan a cuatro personas por introducir ilegalmente 6.000 millones de bolívares venezolanos a través del aeropuerto de Madrid https://t.co/uAjvNLLG3y pic.twitter.com/e4K6lPeWh0

— AlbertoRodNews (@AlbertoRodNews) September 3, 2024