A number of Britons were amongst 60 people arrested across Spain as part of a National Police crackdown on the redistribution of pirated television transmissions.
Hotel directors and community presidents have been allegedly involved in a fraud estimated to run into millions of euros.
Financial administrators and commercial operators have also been detained while two illegal cable television businesses which supplied pirated pay-TV signals for a monthly fee have been closed.
One in Sevilla had a client base of almost 1,300 while another in Tenerife serviced around 3,000 homes. Other similar businesses were identified along the Costas, while urbanisations and hotels which distributed signals illegally to residents and clients have also been targeted.
For the first time in Spain, the administrators of an Internet site have been arrested on charges of illegally rebroadcasting pay-TV channels on a website.
The programmes, mainly football matches, were taken from Spanish and Arab satellite broadcasters.
Of particular interest to investigators were the companies advertising to the British population in Spain and offering pay-TV channels from the UK. National Police say that thousands of fraudulent contracts have been issued by such companies to their customers and millions of euros have been taken in fees.
Hundreds of satellite television decoders and smart cards were seized during the operation, along with the equipment necessary to redistribute the illegal signals. The operation involved the National Police bases in 17 areas of Spain from Madrid to the Canary Islands and from Barcelona down to the Costa del Sol.
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