The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office negotiates with the Russian businessman settled in Gran Canaria Vladimir Kokorev a conviction of conformity for the laundering of the undeclared 120 million euros that he claims he earned between 1999 and 2014, a profit that he attributes to the illegal sale of weapons to the regime of Teodoro Obiang in Equatorial Guinea.

On Monday, the sixth section of the Las Palmas Court plans to hold a first hearing on the so-called ‘Kokorev case’ after having rejected the request of the defenses to cede this file to the National Court, which already accumulates 16 years of history.

It is the Prosecutor’s Office itself that has announced that the hearing of May 19 is convened only “for compliance purposes,” because it is negotiating with the defenses an agreed conviction whose terms it assures that it will reveal that same day, if the defendants accept them.

Until now, the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office had been requesting eight years in prison and a fine of 240 million euros for Vladimir Kokorev, whom he accuses of having laundered millionaire profits allegedly obtained from selling military equipment to Equatorial Guinea at prices that included “notorious cost overres”.

His wife, Yulia Maleeva, and his son Igor Kokorev face the same facts, for whom he demands six years in prison and a fine of 150 million.

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CEL

The charges on which the Spanish Justice can demand responsibility from the Kokorev are limited to the crime of money laundering by the conditions that Panama put in 2015 to extradite them, when they were arrested in that country.

In an indictment to which EFE has had access, the Prosecutor’s Office describes Vladimir Kokorev as the “head of a transnational criminal organization” dedicated to the “corrupt trade in military defense equipment and dual use”.

Anti-corruption assures that the Kokorevs managed to generate “an illicit million wealth of at least 120 million euros, in the period between 1999 and 2014”, supplying “weapons of war” to the Government of Teodoro Obiang, at a time when Equatorial Guinea was forming its naval forces.

Through the accounts of its corporate network, he continues, they reached a circulation of 678.92 million euros from 59 transfers made by the Public Treasury of Equatorial Guinea and a company called Abayak SA.

The prosecutor even details in his letter that Vladimir Kokorev has links with the criminal organization of “a citizen of the Russian Federation convicted of illegal trafficking and smuggling weapons for carrying out the sale to China and Iran of cruise missiles with nuclear loading capacity.”

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“That activity (with Equatorial Guinea), never declared and always hidden,” says the Prosecutor’s Office, was carried out through two Panamanian companies (Kalunga Company SA and Intracoastal Trading) and another of the Scheychelles Islands (SJ Marine Company Ltd.)”, which gave “coverage” to the “multiple contracts” concluded by Vladimir Kokorev.

“All made with notorious overcost and overbilling imputed to the Public Treasury of Malabo, for the sale of military weapons, war and naval infrastructure, sold in collusion with officials and senior military dignitaries to the Government of the Republic of Equatorial Guinea,” he continues.

Anti-corruption also formulates the same charges against a lawyer from Gran Canaria who allegedly collaborated in money laundering, Juan José Arencibia, and two sisters of this one, for whom he asks for sentences of five years in prison and fines of 100, ten and seven million euros.

In the order that ended the investigation in May 2021, Court number 5 of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria estimated at 450 million euros the income that the Kokorev would have obtained from selling to Equatorial Guinea “ships, combat helicopters, armored vehicles, military corvettes, patrol boats, frigates, fighter jets, bombers and dual-use military weapons.”

For the investigator, there were indications to take the case of the judgment that the Kokorev and their collaborators earned 100 million “inflating the costs” of that material, with the collaboration of two advisors and three relatives of Obiang in charge of the Armed Forces or the Guinean Government (a son-in-law, a cousin and a nephew), of which she said in that order that they received commissions from the defendants.

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To date, businessman Vladimir Kokorev has always denied that neither he, nor his wife Yulia Maleeva, nor his son Igor Kokorev have bribed or paid commissions to relatives and advisors of the president of Equatorial Guinea to facilitate the sale of weapons to that country.

The family assures that trade relations with Equatorial Guinea were established by Vladimir Kokorev, without the participation of his wife or son; they were not illegal and consisted of the supply of “ships for the transport of goods and people, as well as helicopters, patrol boats and other goods.”