Eight foreign citizens were arrested by the police on suspicion of association and collusion in money laundering, IPN reports.

According to the National Anticorruption Center, three of the suspects are of French origin, two are Mexicans, one is from the Dominican Republic, one is from Canada, one is from the U.S. and the last one is from Gabon. They came to Moldova to use the national banking system to withdraw and transfer illegally earned money from correspondent accounts of foreign banks. The sums amounted to hundreds of millions of euros. The suspects entered Moldova posing as foreign investors.

To perform the fraudulent transactions, the members of the group engaged IT specialists to illegally enter the information systems of the banks. The suspects used several schemes to withdraw money from the accounts of foreign banks through Moldovan financial entities.

The eight persons were placed under arrest for 72 hours.