Police raided the offices of the Diaz-Bastien & Truan law firm in Marbella and Madrid and took possession of 30,000 documents.

A COURT in Marbella will look into companies linked to Scottish actor Sean Connery in the ‘Goldfinger’ case.

Malaga Provincial Court has confirmed that Malibu SA and By the Sea can be investigated by the Marbella court and the investigation does not have to be carried out by a Madrid court.

Operation Goldfinger investigations focused on the sale of the Marbella villa owned by Connery and his wife Michelle Roquebrune, both of whom have been charged, and the subsequent construction of 70 apartments.

The case was opened in 2007 by the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor, and focused on three agreements, one signed in 2000 by the former mayor of Marbella, charged in the Malaya corruption case, Julian Muñoz, and the Malibu society, which owned Connery’s villa.

The lawyers Diaz-Bastien & Truan, who handled Connery’s business while he lived in Spain, are said to have negotiated the reclassification of the land with the late Jesus Gil and former urban planning councillor Juan Antonio Roca, also charged in the Malaya case.

Police raided the offices of the Diaz-Bastien & Truan law firm in Marbella and Madrid and took possession of 30,000 documents.

MarbellaTown Hall lost an estimated €2.7 million through these operations. It is estimated by the Tax Agency that the whole operation produced €53 million in benefits for the 20 people involved in the alleged crime network.

Connery and his wife were ordered to appear in court to give evidence, but he claimed his health prevented him from attending from his Caribbean home. They lived in Puerto Banus from the 70’s until the late 90’s in the beachside mansion called Malibu.  They sold the property in 1998 and luxury flats were built on the land. The flats currently cost between €1.4 and €2.2 million. 

BRIT FUGITIVES ARRESTED IN SPAIN

Following information that two people had fled to Spain who were wanted in connection with cultivating cannabis, a European arrest warrant was issued for their detention.

The two, a 47-year-old man and a 48-year-old woman, from Whitstable, were arrested in the Malaga area, and are now awaiting extradition. They will appear in court in Madrid in connection with the production and supply of cannabis.

The arrests are connected to ongoing inquiries into three cannabis factories found in Whitstable, Wooton and Dover where cannabis worth an estimated £2m was cultivated

National police officer has been sentenced to 17 years in prison for stealing drugs from Sevilla Provincial Police Station in between 2006 and 2008.

The officer was a member of the Drugs and Organised Crime Unit (Udyco), and with the help of another man and their respective partners, they stole more than 150 kilos of cocaine and heroin, then hid the money they had made from selling them.

One of the women made small packages which they swapped for the stolen drugs so no-one would notice they were gone.

Following that, they bought luxury goods, including a 12-metre yacht in 2009 which had been seized from drug smugglers and auctioned by the police.

His partner has been sentenced to 15 years in prison, his wife to two-and-a-half years in prison and his partner’s wife to six years in prison.

They will also have to pay fines amounting to €15 million and will be embargoed to ensure payment. 

Philip Baron appeared to a successful property developer and hotelier

A flamboyant multi-millionaire funded a life of champagne, horses and high society dinners by running Britain's biggest ever drug rackets.

Philip Baron appeared to a successful property developer and hotelier who lived in a luxury mansion and was a regular player at one of the world's most prestigious Ryder Cup golf courses.

He stayed in luxury hotels while meeting with Columbia's most feared drugs cartels.

With the profits his crimes Baron bought a £1m detached gated home with a paddock in a sleepy picturesque village in the Republic of Ireland plus a luxury villa in Spain and a string of other properties.

He also splashed out on a £86,000 Bentley GT Continental, enrolled two of his children in boarding schools and bought them both horses.

Baron also became respected figure in the county set of Co Kildare joining the £5,000-a-year exclusive K Club where the Arnold Palmer designed course has hosted Ryder Cup golf tournaments and which was next door to his five-bedroom home.

Baron became a regular at charity black tie dinners and was happy to pose for photographs in the back of a limousine sipping champagne in his dinner suit alongside his buxom blonde haired second wife.

He became known as '4x' because of his love of Range Rovers and also 'Butlins' because of his Spanish holiday property portfolio. He regularly attended England football internationals and went to see Ashes test matches. His youngest daughter joined a modelling agency in London.

COSTA DRUGS BARON,Run by expat Britons, the network smuggled at least 110 tonnes of drugs estimated to be worth £350m over 15 years.

Philip Baron owed his conspicuous wealth to the improbable success of what he said was his company renting deck chairs on Spanish beaches.

The would-be beach-ware magnate, whose vast detached home backed on to one of Ireland’s premier golf courses, did indeed have a hugely lucrative income from a business enterprise based in the Costa del Sol. But it had nothing to do with deck chairs.

Instead, he was a kingpin in one of Britain’s most prolific drug smuggling networks, masterminding the transportation of vast consignments of cannabis and cocaine from Spain to the UK. He used the multi-million pound proceeds to fund a lavish lifestyle far beyond, he believed, the reach of the law.

Today justice finally caught up with the 57-year-old Mancunian when he pleaded guilty at Liverpool Crown Court to charges of conspiring to import 60 tonnes of cocaine, many tonnes of cannabis and money laundering. He will be sentenced in June.

The father-of-three, who used a reconciliation with his estranged daughter to pull her into his smuggling and money-laundering cartel, is the final suspect to be convicted following a five-year investigation by the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (Soca) which its officers say has “completely dismantled” one of Britain’s top 10 drugs rings.

Run by expat Britons, the network smuggled at least 110 tonnes of drugs estimated to be worth £350m over 15 years. Operation Beath, the Soca investigation, has resulted in the conviction of 29 people and jail sentences totalling 200 years.

Steve Baldwin, Soca’s head of investigations, said: “There’s no doubt Baron and his associates were operating at the top end of organised crime. He lived a lavish lifestyle abroad, portraying himself as a legitimate businessman, while orchestrating the importation of huge amounts of drugs into the UK.

“There is clear evidence that his criminal activity was having a direct impact on communities in many of our towns and cities. Baron thought he was untouchable.”

The inquiry, which involved police forces from Costa Rica to the Irish Gardai, has yielded a rare insight into the workings of a smuggling network – from the code and nicknames used by the drug barons to their overseas trust funds and their extravagant spending habits.

Along with his co-conspirators, Baron, known as “4x” or “four by” because of his liking for SUVs, had hit upon a novel way of bringing their illegal product into Britain.

Rather than going to the trouble of hiding drugs in suitcases, the network decided to use the services of freight and courier companies to send consignments to 12 addresses across Britain rented from office services companies.

At the rate of at least one delivery per month, drugs were packed into boxes and labelled as technical manuals or printed material sent to unconnected and legitimate UK companies. Once they had arrived, another member of the gang would collect the consignment and distribute it to dealers in cities including Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham.

Suspicions were raised about gang members as far back as in 2008 when staff at a Cheltenham office services company became suspicious about the quantity of packages coming through its premises and alerted police. Soca began the long process of tracing the network back to Baron and another drug lord, Walter Callinan – like Baron a former lorry driver – who had moved from Stoke to a sprawling villa in Malaga.

Mark, the Soca officer who led the investigation, said the men fed supplies into their own network as well as supplying other outlets in Britain’s £5bn drugs market.

Baron, originally from Bolton, maintained the façade of a respectable businessman, driving a Bentley GT Continental and attending black-tie dinners. His two children by his second marriage were provided for with trust funds set up by the network’s money launderer in locations from Switzerland to Uzbekistan.

Neither of these children nor his current wife were involved with the drug business. But Baron did not extend the same courtesy to his third child, Rachael, who was contacted by her father for the first time in many years after the birth of her first child about six years ago.

Within weeks, Baron had enticed his estranged daughter into his network, using her to make purchases on his credit card, ranging from paying his phone bill to spending £60,000 on watches during a single visit to a jeweller’s. Rachael, who was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for laundering £1m of drugs money, also arranged the purchase of her father’s Bentley.

As the funds started to pour into the bank accounts of the network’s members, a sense of invincibility infected the main players. Baron, who was arrested in 2011, spent nearly two years fighting extradition to Britain, taking his case all the way to Ireland’s Supreme Court.

Mark added: “They hammered the UK’s streets with drugs in the belief that they could live a life of impunity from abroad.”

Ironically, it was the habit of Callinan and the network’s principal money launderer – a former Barclay’s IT worker, Malcolm “Sir Humphrey” Carle – of keeping meticulous records that led to their downfall.

When police raided Callinan’s villa they found a 200-page ledger detailing every transaction for 17 tonnes of cannabis sent to Britain over a 17-month period. The shipments accounted for 6 per cent of all cannabis sent to the UK in that time.

One-by-one the gang members were picked off by the investigation until Baron and Callinan, who was sentenced to 11 years’ imprisonment in 2011, were among the few major players left. Shortly after his arrest, Callinan phoned his son in a phone call which Soca investigators admitted they had found “enjoyable”.

The drugs overlord said: “There is documentation, spreadsheets of monies collected off motorways... 100 grand, 60 grand, 80 grand. We’re f***ed mate, they’ve got that much documentation. F***ing hell, the Pope wouldn’t get out of this.”

A criminal gang in Spain apparently took the bodies of dogs and other animals from animal sanctuaries, vets, zoos and farms, which should have been incinerated, and then processed them to create protein and fats that could be sold on.

The authorities in Spain have not ruled out the possibility that protein or fats from the carcasses may even have been used in some processed human food.

Britain’s Food Standards Agency says it is aware of the investigation and it is liaising with its counterparts in Spain.

Stolen: Gangs apparently took dogs from animal sanctuaries and processed them for sale (file picture)

Food chain: Stray dogs taken from Spain may have ended up in pet food or farm animal feed (file picture)

A spokesman said: ‘We are aware of these reports and are in contact with the Spanish authorities about their investigation.

‘We are currently not testing food for meat from dogs. Our priority is to test beef products for gross contamination with horse meat because that is where the problem clearly is.’

 

 

Evidence has been found at warehouses and processing plants in Galicia and Salamanca.

Last year, police found a warehouse filled with 15 tons of dead stray dogs which they believe were going to be processed into animal feed, in the Galician town of As Neves.

Similar grisly discoveries have been found in warehouses elsewhere in the north of Spain.

Seprona, the environmental arm of the Guardia Civil, has sent dozens of samples of commercial pet food to the Anfaco-Cecopesca laboratories in Vigo, Galicia, after a judge received reports from an industry whistle-blower.

According to laboratory tests performed in one of the processing plants based in the town of Aldeaseca de la Frontera, in Salamanca, fat samples destined for animal feed had DNA traces of both sheep and dog.

Cannibalism: Spanish authorities have sent pet food samples for testing after reports from a whistleblower. Tests have already shown fat samples to be used in animal feed had traces of both sheep and dog

A major police investigation has been underway since March 2012, according to a report in Spain’s El Mundo newspaper.

The pressure group Viva, which campaigns against meat eating, is writing to UK supermarkets to ask them to test their food for the presence of dog and other species.

Its campaigns manager, Justin Kerswell, said: ‘It is a horrifying possibility that dog and rat meat might have entered the human food chain, but given the depth of ineptitude shown and the EU-wide fraud the horse meat scandal has exposed, it seems entirely plausible.

‘It may only be a matter of time before dog, rat and perhaps even cat meat is found in British processed food or farmed animal feed.

‘British supermarkets have been selling horse meat to consumers for years without knowing it, so what else has been on sale? They will have no idea unless they specifically test for it.’

Scottish Labour MEP, Alyn Smith, said: ‘These revelations from Spain indicate just where I fear this may be going.  By the time meat becomes "protein" then traceability all but breaks down, especially in the pet and animal feed markets.

‘I'm concerned that given the EU-wide pet food market this contamination could be considerably more widespread.

‘The spectre of forced cannibalism turns this issue into something considerably more serious, and we need reassurance that this is an isolated incident of criminality, albeit it would seem on a pretty significant scale given the reported sourcing of 15 tonnes of dogs must take some organisation.’

Spanish police arrest 33 suspected street gang members

Spanish police have detained 33 youths, including 13 minors, in Madrid suspected of belonging to two different Latin American street gangs, they said Tuesday.

Police detained 22 suspected members of a gang called Blood, which has its origins in the United States and which up until very recently was hardly active in Spain, a police statement said.

The group included the alleged leader of the gang.

They also arrested 11 suspected members of another gang called Dominican Don't Play who allegedly took part in the beating of a minor leaving him with serious injuries to his legs and one arm, the statement added.

"With these operations, investigators have given a significant blow against Latino gangs operating in the Spanish capital," the statement said.

Police seized machetes, knives, screwdrivers and baseball bats embedded with dozens of nails during searches of the suspects' homes.

"The Blood were born in the United States in the 1970s. They started by imitating other Latino bands that existed there like the Latin Kings or the Netas and then they came to Spain," a police spokesman said.

The suspects include Bolivian, Colombians, Ecuadorian, Spanish and Dominican nationals, the spokesman added.

They are suspected of armed robbery, making threats and membership in a criminal group.

Last week police detained around 30 youths in Barcelona in an operation against a gang called the Black Dominican Panthers which specialised in drug trafficking.

Latin American gangs emerged in the United States decades ago. They have gained ground in Spain over the past decade due to a sharp rise in immigration from Latin America.

"El Monstro" - the monster - was wanted on an international arrest warrant for other murders in his home country.

Police moved in on the group last week as they received delivery of a cache of weapons originating in eastern Europe that included several Kalashnikov rifles fitted with silencers, a 357 magnum revolver, two shotguns and a long-range rifle with telescopic lens.

During the raid officers also seized electronic detonators, explosives and an anti-tank grenade launcher, as the gang received delivery of an arms shipment transported in a hired transit van.

Investigators believe the squad were sent to Spain to collect debts and settle scores on behalf of Colombian drug cartels while also trying to forge an alliance with Mexican traffickers based in Spain's eastern city of Valencia.

It was the first time police had smashed a squad apparently sent to set up a permanent base in Spain, said Andres Dieguez, head of the Spain's Central Organised Crime Brigade.

Previously individual hit men had been sent over from Colombia to settle scores and protect their business in Spain, the main cocaine gateway into Europe, before returning to South America.

The gang were also in possession of containers of acid, which they are suspected of using to decompose the bodies of their victims and to ensure their identification would be difficult.

Among those arrested were the suspected leader of the cell, who went by the alias "Conejo" meaning rabbit and his right hand man "El Monstro", police said. They have not released the real names of those arrested.

The first was wanted by Colombian police and was involved in a feud with a rival gang of assassins in Colombia, believed to be responsible for carrying out a hit on his brother six months ago and his nephew earlier this month.

"El Monstro" - the monster - was wanted on an international arrest warrant for other murders in his home country.

According to local media reports some members of the gang were former members of the paramilitary group, United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC).

The gang is also suspected of touting for work from other crime organizations for which they offered to kidnap, maim or kill, in return for 50 per cent of the money owed by their target.

Among their targets was the sister of a drug felon jailed in Spain who had outstanding debts to a cartel in Colombia. They were ordered to kidnap the woman until the convict could arrange payment of what he owed.

Spanish police arrested 10 other people — six Russians, two Ukrainians and two Georgians — along the Costa del Sol,

The Russian head of the crime network was arrested in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in December. This month, the Spanish police arrested 10 other people — six Russians, two Ukrainians and two Georgians — along the Costa del Sol, a popular vacation destination in southernSpain, where the criminals are believed to have had their main base of operations.

The search continues, however, for other possible cells operated by the criminal network outside of Europe, investigators said.

The criminal threat, essentially a form of online extortion called ransomware, relied on malware that authorities believe was developed by the Russian-led gang. It locked a user’s computer, and send a message in the form of a fake police warning, demanding 100 euros ($134) to unlock it.

“This is the first major success of its kind against a very new phenomenon that we have only identified in the last two years,” Rob Wainwright, the director of Europol, said at a news conference at the Interior Ministry in Madrid. “This is a mass marketing scam to distribute this thousands of times and rely on the fact that even if only 2 percent fall victim to the scam, it is still a very good pickup rate.”

Mr. Wainwright estimated that 3 percent of those victimized had paid the fake fines. Europol did not give an overall estimate of how much money the criminals might have gained, but in Spain alone they are believed to have collected more than 1 million euros ($1.3 million), said Francisco Martínez, Spain’s secretary of state for security.

Computer security experts in the United States recently estimated that computer criminals make more than $5 million a year on ransomware, though many say that is too conservative.

Investigators suggested on Wednesday that the software used by the criminals could also be aimed at online users who were actually likely to have made unlawful use of the Internet, by picking up key words linked to illegal activities like child pornography or illicit file swapping. That would make the threat of a fine for abusive use of the Web more believable for the user.

Mr. Wainwright emphasized the complexity of the software, with as many as 48 mutations of the virus detected.

“It used the idiom and logo of each specific police service,” he said. “Even Europol and my own name have been used to defraud citizens.”

In most cases of ransomware, victims do not regain access to their computer unless they hire a technician to remove the virus manually. In Spain, after thousands of complaints, the Interior Ministry set up a Web site to help users uninstall the virus. The Web site received about 750,000 visits last year.

The Spanish police received 1,200 official complaints about the virus since it was first detected in Spain in May 2011.

“What is clear is that the organization had a very well-structured and complex infrastructure developed from Russia,” said José Rodríguez, a chief inspector in Spain who handled the investigation.

But he said that it also allowed them to “keep track of victims in Spain, Europe, the U.S. and elsewhere” from their base in southern Spain. “These people could have operated from anywhere but somehow found it more convenient to do so from Spain,” Mr. Rodríguez said.

The Spanish police said six of the 10 people arrested this month had already been detained, charged with money laundering, fraud and involvement in a criminal organization. The four others remain under investigation. Europol offered no details on the Russian who was suspected of leading of the gang who was arrested in December.

The Spanish police also seized several computers and more than 200 credit cards. They said the suspects also had 26,000 euros ($35,000) in cash, which they were planning to transfer to Russia on the day of their arrest.

Europol and other police agencies are still trying to determine just how much money the criminals gained and what it was used for. The gang laundered the money in Spain and elsewhere and sent it to Russia via electronic payments.

Europol started its investigation in December 2011 from its operational center in The Hague, after six countries reported more than 20,000 victims of the virus. While the virus generally came with a police warning, the gang is believed to have used different versions to deceive more users, including one fraudulent message that was designed to look as if it had been sent by the Spanish association that defends artists’ copyrights.