Finnish police swooped in on a suspected criminal circle in southwest Finland accused of using grey market labour and laundering up to €10 million that is allegedly being led by a Russian man with Maltese citizenship, Uutiset reported.

The police targeted the properties of real estate firm Airiston Helmi, which has sold millions of euros worth of properties in the Turku archipelago of Finland. Three people have been taken into custody in relation to the arrests, and have not been named by national police forces yet.

However, Matthew Caruana Galizia has said that the Russian man at the head of the criminal ring is Melnikov Pavel Eduardovich. In a Twitter post early Monday morning, he alleged that Eduardovich was the man at the top of the crime syndicate, and that he had purchased Maltese citizenship in 2016.

“The ‘Maltese citizen’ using his EU passport to run this money laundering racket is Melnikov Pavel Eduardovich — Maltese ID card number 385315L. His name appears in the Malta government gazette of 19 August 2016,” said Caruana Galizia.

A high-ranking Finnish inspector said he believes the case is linked to a massive international money laundering scheme

Airiston Helmi is known to have business connections in at least Italy, Estonia, and Poland, and is known to have a particular interest in real estate deals in strategically important areas.

The firm has previously been investigated by Swedish and Finnish media, with one Swedish media house, Spotlight, even saying that a drone it had used to take photos of their Pargas business premises had been downed.

When they retrieved the drone, they found the attached camera had been removed.

Airiston Helmi is mainly involved in transactions related to properties in the southwest of Finland, and their financial history has raised some serious doubts in investigators.

Records show that, for example, a property was sold to a private buyer for €4.5 million in 2014 – but the real estate register did not indicate the buyer’s name, raising suspicions.

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Johnathan Cilia

Johnathan is an award-winning Maltese journalist interested in social justice, politics, minority issues, music and food. Follow him at @supreofficialmt on Instagram, and send him news, food and music stories at [email protected]