The police's internal affairs unit yesterday arrested 14 people for their alleged involvement in a police corruption plot that had been active for more than 15 years. At that time, its members had defrauded more than 500,000 euros of the public coffers, according to the first estimates. The investigation, baptized as Operation Staple, has been directed by the anti-corruption prosecutor's office after the police's own directorate General filed a complaint in 2016. Among those arrested are six police officers — most of them from the Economic and technical divisions — although not all are agents, according to sources from the Ministry of the Interior. The other eight detainees are an official of the Directorate General of Traffic and seven people linked to a hotel business that had been made with some of the contracts now under suspicion. The detainees are accused of crimes of criminal organization, fraud of public administrations, prevarication, bribery, embezzlement of public flows, against the public treasury and money laundering, as detailed anti-corruption. Vehicles intervened with the arrests, the court of instruction number 50 of Madrid, which supervises the investigations, also authorized 22 registries of domiciles and of offices of companies in Madrid, Pozuelo de Alarcón, Móstoles, Navalcarnero, Avila, arenas of San Pedro and Guadalajara. In addition, it adopted a number of precautionary measures on the assets of the investigated. Thus, it called for the blockade of various bank accounts, the intervention of 13 vehicles — most of them high-end — and the embargo of six properties. In the denunciation of the Directorate General of Police that has led the investigation, it was ensured that a series of police officers took years taking advantage of their participation in the tables of hiring of the police institution to adjudicate in a way Irregular contracts in exchange for commissions, which were sometimes economic and others, gifts. The Amaños affected services contracts, works and purchase of material for the police facilities themselves.