Female Russian fugitive faces extradition
Suspect is accused of insurance scam
A RUSSIAN woman wanted by the authorities in her country on suspicion of fraud has been arrested by the National Police in Benidorm.
In December 2020, Interpol issued a Red Notice request to law enforcement worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest her pending extradition.
According to the document, the fugitive was a selfemployed businesswoman who set up a contract to work as an agent for a wellknown insurance company in Russia in 2011.
This entailed her formalising insurance contracts with people and legal entities for the company in return for a commission.
Over the following three years, the suspect finalised 42,243 contracts, worth a total of over €1.4 million, for which she should have kept just over €170,000 and transferred the rest to the insurance company.
However, she allegedly did not transfer the money and misappropriated the funds.
The Russian authorities said she had fled the country in January 2020 on a flight to Alicante-Elche airport, where they lost track of her.
The suspect was located by National Police at a hotel in Benidorm, where she was with a Spanish man from a town in Alicante province, who allegedly had nothing to do with the crime she was wanted for.
Once the officers had confirmed beyond any doubt that the suspect was the woman on the Red Notice, they informed the Interpol office in Madrid so it could
inform the Russian authorities.
The suspect has been handed over to the High Court in Madrid, which will rule whether to extradite her.
Despite recent calls to suspend or exclude Russia from Interpol, the network instead said on March 10 that ‘heightened supervision and monitoring measures in relation to Russia have now been implemented’.