Spain's Robert Mueller takes on the Russian mob

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 91%. (I'm a bot)

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It is where the work of Grinda overlaps with that of America's Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Grinda's investigations have targeted Russian banker Alexander Torshin, who has been described by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., as "The conservatives' favorite Russian." Spanish authorities sought to arrest Torshin during a planned visit to Spain in 2013 on suspicion that he was laundering money through a Mallorca hotel that he secretly owned from afar; possibly tipped off, Torshin didn't show in Spain, and Grinda says he's no longer pursuing the case.

"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.

When Grinda took over the post as lead special prosecutor in 2006, he inherited a wealth of information from Martínez's studies abroad. That year, Grinda also made contact with another expert on Russian organized crime, Litvinenko, a former Russian intelligence agent who'd fled to London a few years after Putin became president.

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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