MADRID, March 29 (Xinhua) -- Spanish police on Wednesday arrested Marbella Mayor Marisol Yague and 18 other city officials on charges of money laundering and corrupt property deals in the coastal resort town in southern Spain, police said.

    ;The police have ordered the freeze of around 1,000 bank accounts connected with the case following a wiretap of the city offices, which recorded the laundering of up to 250 million euros (300 million U.S. dollars) from drug trafficking conducted outside Spain.

    And some 350 million euros (420 million dollars) and more than 250 ranches had been seized during the raid, police said.

    Yague also faces other charges, including breach of trust, influence peddling and fraudulent price fixing.

    The police operation, codenamed Ballena Blanca (White Whale), began on March 5, when Marbella judge, Miguel Angel Torres, authorized the wiretap, following a wider investigation which Torres and anti-corruption prosecutors began four months earlier. Enditem