Spain's Robert Mueller takes on the Russian mob

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 96%. (I'm a bot)

"The Russian mafia," Grinda explains in his Madrid office - where shelves, dotted with a few Russian stacking dolls, are thick with boxed files with names like Ivanov and Petrov - "First appeared in Spain in the '90s, after the fall of the Soviet Union." Escape from Siberian winds wasn't the sole impetus: "They weren't just looking for sun, they were looking for anonymity." And, he says, for quite a few years they found it.

Another mafia expert, author and investigative reporter Roberto Saviano, speculates that Britain itself, a mecca for Russian billionaires - and where the BBC show "McMafia," about Russian mobsters, is a huge hit - has become the most corrupt place on the planet.

"Spain is becoming increasingly ambitious and aggressive in its investigation of [Russian] crime networks," wrote Galeotti, noting that a Spanish judge issued a request for "International arrest warrants" for several senior Russian officials for alleged involvement in Russian mafia groups.

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