Francisco Corbacho

The mayor of Gaucín, Francisco Corbacho, has been fined 2,700 euros and banned from holding public office for seven years after a court found him guilty of embezzlement of public funds and corruption. The judge heard how between December 2002 and January 2003 Corbacho took advantage of the absence of the municipal secretary to obtain Town Hall cheques for sums ranging between 10,000 and 22,000 euros, amounting to a total of 200,000 euros. The discrepancy in the accounts was reported by the secretary at the end of January and the then mayor later paid back the money in question.

four Madrid Lawyers have been ordered that they be held in prison pending trial

Murcia Judge Miguel Angel Torres who has been investigating the corruption scandal in Marbella has indicted four Madrid Lawyers and has ordered that they be held in prison pending trial. This follows the arrest of the Cartagena property developer Juan Antonio Roca for corruption charges. Roca is belived to be the mastermind behind a corruption ring in Marbella, Andalucia.

The four Lawyers have been involved in large projects in Los Alcazares like Nueva Ribera. All four lawyers are from the firm of Sánchez Zubizarreta-Soriano Zurita in Madrid. Police experts have confirmed it will be many months before the evidence in assimilated into a case which can be brought before the court. During the police intterogation the lawyers were questioned about the transfers of many thousands of euros during the last few weeks.

‘Malaya 2’

‘Operation Malaya 2’ new offences came to light, resulting in some 30 city councillors and business people being accused of massive corruption. These accusations were in addition to the arrests made earlier in the year. Then. 29 people were arrested, including Mayor Marisol Yagüe, her deputy, Isabel García Marcos and José Antonio Roca, who was town planning advisor. During the investigation, Judge Miguel Ángel Torres said of Mr Roca that he was the driving force in Marbella City Hall and that the Mayor performed a mere symbolic role. In September 2006, the former mayor and her deputy were released from custody on 60,000-euro bail.

Those arrested as part of ‘Malaya 2’ included the former chief of Marbella’s police Rafael del Pozo and Tomás Reñones, the city’s second deputy mayor. Mr Reñones became acting mayor after the arrest of the mayor and the first deputy mayor. However, his involvement in the scandals became clear during the following-up investigations and Judge Torres ordered his unconditional detention. Tomás Reñones was football player and captain of Atlético de Madrid, the football club owned by the late Jesús Gil, the first of the big corrupted mayors of Marbella and founder of GIL, the political party whose members included the disgraced mayor Marisol Yagüe.

Three notaries have been arrested in connection with Operation White Whale.

Operation White Whale is the first time police have established a direct link between organised crime and Spain's booming construction and property industries. Half of all new construction starts in Spain take place on the Mediterranean coast.

In a boon for international criminals, established practice enables notaries to absent themselves for a few minutes when property contracts are signed, allowing the buyer to hand over “dinero B”, a substantial amount of undeclared cash. Unlike bankers, public notaries are not required to “know their clients” or establish the provenance of money exchanged in property transactions.

White Whale case in Marbella

Police investigators in the United Kingdom helped uncover the links between British criminals and the White Whale case in Marbella. The British police were investigating the Eprom Fraud, which is expected to have involved as much as 800,000 euros. They investigated what happened to this money, gained through a fraudulent scheme by which the owners of Jade Technologies Limited, Harvey Levin and his wife, were selling pre-paid electronic circuits to unsuspecting customers at exceptionally low cost. Jade Technologies thus accumulated a fortune with the sale of components that their customers never saw, the components never being manufactured. In the traditional way that this type of business is done, the vast profits were allegedly transferred through an Australian company to the Egremont Corporation, represented in Spain by Fernando del Valle, who in turn transferred them to the Duconte Holdings and Gainford Corporation, also run from the Marbella office. The principal shareholder of the Gainford Corporation was Harvey Levin.

Silverkey Properties, Gates Investments and Fun Fair Investments

According to the police, three of the companies run from the offices of Fernando del Valle in Marbella, Silverkey Properties, Gates Investments and Fun Fair Investments, served to launder money gained from the trafficking of hashish. The foreign connection here was with a Tunisian named Sophiane Hambli, a known drug trafficker arrested in San Pedro de Alcántara during a shoot-out last year. Hambli was on the run from the French police, after having escaped from prison in France, where he was serving time for drug trafficking and other crimes. The laundering of this drug money, it appears, was being done through the Silverkey Properties and Garden Gates Investments companies, and Hambli worked closely with his father-in-law, Mabrouk Chebicheb, who was also detained in the Marbella operation, and his wife. The other company run from Del Valle’s office, Fun Fair Investments, was allegedly linked to Ghali Lamrani and Jamal Zegzaoui, two Moroccans wanted by various police forces for their membership of a cocaine trafficking gang. They had been arrested in the possession of three thousand kilos of cocaine and a thousand kilos of hashish. The Marbella companies had allegedly been used to launder 720,000 euros of illicit gains by this gang.

Del Valle´s real estate operations were a means to launder cash for up to nine international organized crime groups

Spanish authorities claim that much of Del Valle´s real estate operations were a means to launder cash for up to nine international organized crime groups. In particular, the authorities allege that the Del Valle law firm set up anonymous trusts - possibly hundreds of shell companies - in nearby Gibraltar, but also in other places likes the Netherlands and the Isle of Man

Since news of the operation hit the press, Spanish authorities have increasingly sought to place some of the blame on Gibraltar, which "is not cooperating in the fight against money laundering," according to Conde Pumpido.

Miss Zaldivar regularly used to receive garbage bags full

Marbella. Miss Zaldivar regularly used to receive garbage bags full of what she liked most: money – to the tune of somewhere in the region of seven hundred million Pesetas, or about £3.5 million. As she used to brag about how much these garbage bags were giving her, she has now been placed in jail by Judge Miguel Angel Torres, who is now planning to hear her testimony before taking any further action. All in all, since last March when the investigation first started, some seventy people have been placed in jail as a result of Judge Torres’ investigations. Also arrested under orders from Judge Torres yesterday was Jose Maria Gonzalez de Caldas, the director of the Xativa bullring.

detained the head of the Municipal police force along with his deputy

The Guardia Civil of Torrevieja yesterday detained the head of the Municipal police force along with his deputy and two officers, after receiving orders to do so from a local judge. More arrests are expected today, and all are accused of creating a series of false documents and of failing to investigate crimes. A local judge has undertaken the current case during the last few months, and yesterday’s arrests were carried out very discreetly according to local sources. Following their arrest, the four were taken to a local court and allowed to go free on condition that they not leave Torrevieja.