MARBELLA CLUB

Juan Antonio Roca and Julián Muñoz must return thousands spent on restaurants, hotels and bonuses claimed through a municipal companyTwo of the people accused in Marbella’s Malaya case have been ordered to pay back more than 300,000 € of ‘unjustified expenses’ claimed from Marbella Town Hall in a ruling from the Court of Auditors regarding the municipal company Planeamiento 2000. The Town Hall had claimed the much higher amount of 1.8 million €. It relates to company accounts between 1997 and 2001 when the man at the centre of the Malaya corruption, the former municipal real estate assessor, Juan Antonio Roca, was manager of Planeamiento 2000 and the town’s former Mayor, Julián Muñoz, was chairman of the board.Both must share the cost of paying back the money with two others seen to have been involved, former Marbella councillor, Esteban Guzmán, and the lawyer, Modesto Perodia. Diario Sur reports the four have also been charged the interest on the amount, more than 122,000 €.The paper notes that the expenses relate to thousands of euros spent in restaurants, plane tickets to Madrid, hotel bills and ‘unjustified bonuses’, in Roca’s case, amounting to almost 223,000 €. The court did not however accept a claim from Marbella Town Hall for 900,000 € which had been paid into the Planeamiento 2000 account by the Mancomunidad to purchase the land on which the desalination plant would later be built. The Tribunal de Cuentas considered it not proved that the funds had later been withdrawn from the account or had been ‘improperly used’.Diario Sur reports two other rulings from the Tribunal de Cuentas last year which, in addition to this latest, mean the ex Mayor, Julián Muñoz, now owes close to 17 million € in the repayments plus interest he must make to Marbella Town Hall.

Two people have been taken into custody by police after 12 kilos of heroin were discovered in the fuel tank of a car intercepted in Tui, Pontevedra, in Galicia. Officers found 21 packages of the drug floating in the tank when they inspected the vehicle.The drugs were transported to Galicia by a Madrid-based gang from Kosovo which had been under police surveillance for some time and which the Interior Ministry said supplied heroin to dealers across the country. The two suspects in custody are the car driver and another gang member who was arrested at the same time in Madrid.Detectives found more than 100,000 € in cash in a search of the flat the group used as their base in the Spanish capital, and also seized 18 mobile phones and a laptop computer. Further arrests have not been ruled out as investigations continue.

'Puerto Banus is like Soho,' he told me at his house. 'You can come out of a theatre in the West End and go to a beautiful restaurant, or go into a side street and find hookers and drug addicts. It's the same here.'
Max, only half-jokingly, suggested that he'd like to be mayor and sort it out. 'I'd clean it up,' he said. 'Someone needs to, because the prostitutes are getting younger and drugs are being sold more brazenly. It's getting rougher.'
One of the main culprits locals blame for the disintegration of Marbella's image is Gary Lineker's brother, Wayne, a cheeky-chappie character with a big grin and even bigger bank balance. His chain of Lineker's bars have become hugely popular throughout Southern Europe. I interviewed him in his main Puerto Banus bar and he was totally unrepentant.
'Marbella's a high-profile place,' he chortled, 'and fortunately for Lineker's, it's turning towards the crowd we want, the working-class British man and woman. We go through 15,000 bottles of beer a weekend now. And the more mucky stories that people write about the place back in Britain, the better business gets. Where there's muck there's money!'
Asked what his message to the rich and famous of Marbella was, Wayne smirked and pronounced: 'Do one.' Which I believe is Lineker's speak for 'Go forth and multiply.'
In the great old days of the town, Ava Gardner and Audrey Hepburn would dine with the likes of Cary Grant and Laurence Olivier at the fashionable Marbella Club.
Today, the cast list of luminaries is a little lower down the celebrity ladder. I ventured down to the coast again to meet up with Bianca Gascoigne, stepdaughter of footballer Gazza, at the infamous Nikki Beach bar. As we spoke, hundreds of half-naked young people began spraying vintage champagne on each other in a four-hourly exercise called, naturally, Champagne Spray Party.
'Do you think this is a sensible thing to be doing in the middle of a recession?' I asked Bianca. 'Absolutely not,' the cheeky minx replied, 'but it's definitely a fun thing to do!'
And that is the attitude of most of the revellers in Marbella. 'Having fun' is the order of the day, and as much of it as you can possibly cram into 24 hours.
'I'm meeting up with Calum Best later,' Bianca giggled, conjuring up the mind-boggling prospect of a Best and a Gascoigne getting drunk together.
One reason the celebrities at each end of the ladder love it so much is that nobody in Marbella, outside of the expats like Max Clifford, seems to care very much what you get up to or what you did in your past.
I found one legendary old rogue, Princess Diana's cad James Hewitt, running a smart new restaurant called the Polo House in Marbella's most exclusive street.
'I had to get away from Britain,' he admitted, 'and this has been the perfect refuge for me. There are no paparazzi, nobody bothers me except when I am happy to be bothered in the restaurant, and I've found the peace and privacy that I could never have back home.
'It's also a very comfortable lifestyle here. But there are two very different worlds. Since the cheap easyJet flights came in, all the hen and stag parties have started flooding into Puerto Banus, and that's changed the character a little from the quite smart, glamorous place it used to be.
'It's also driven the really rich people out a bit, tucked away in the secluded areas on the outskirts.'
That's indisputably true. But the rich still head down to the port occasionally to hit their credit cards in one of the world's most expensive shopping precincts.
I went shopping with former Birmingham City soccer boss Karren Brady. She's about to join Lord Alan Sugar as his new Apprentice sidekick, so should know a thing or two about business. But watching her sweep through Gucci, Prada and Fendi like a human vacuum cleaner was a terrifying spectacle.
Her eyes alighted on a rather plain-looking handbag. 'Oooh, that's lovely,' she cooed. 'You can never have enough handbags.' This one boasted a price tag of £15,000.
'Who the hell buys this kind of thing?' I gasped.
'Oh, there's a lot of serious wealth in Marbella,' she chuckled. 'And they come down to Puerto Banus for the glamour, the yachts, the celebrities, the shops. There are two sides to this place. But both sides are quite fun. It's part euro, part trash.'
And that, at its heart, is Marbella. A place to retire to, party in, make a fortune, spend a fortune, drink shots, get shot --whatever takes your fancy.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/article-1242085/Piers-Morgan-heads-Marbella-Spains-Butlins-billionaires.html#ixzz0cUYOMKHk

Marbella was the best in the 80s, Freddie Foreman was cool.'Puerto Banus is like Soho,' he told me at his house. 'You can come out of a theatre in the West End and go to a beautiful restaurant, or go into a side street and find hookers and drug addicts. It's the same here.'
Max, only half-jokingly, suggested that he'd like to be mayor and sort it out. 'I'd clean it up,' he said. 'Someone needs to, because the prostitutes are getting younger and drugs are being sold more brazenly. It's getting rougher.'
One of the main culprits locals blame for the disintegration of Marbella's image is Gary Lineker's brother, Wayne, a cheeky-chappie character with a big grin and even bigger bank balance. His chain of Lineker's bars have become hugely popular throughout Southern Europe. I interviewed him in his main Puerto Banus bar and he was totally unrepentant.
'Marbella's a high-profile place,' he chortled, 'and fortunately for Lineker's, it's turning towards the crowd we want, the working-class British man and woman. We go through 15,000 bottles of beer a weekend now. And the more mucky stories that people write about the place back in Britain, the better business gets. Where there's muck there's money!'
Asked what his message to the rich and famous of Marbella was, Wayne smirked and pronounced: 'Do one.' Which I believe is Lineker's speak for 'Go forth and multiply.'
In the great old days of the town, Ava Gardner and Audrey Hepburn would dine with the likes of Cary Grant and Laurence Olivier at the fashionable Marbella Club.
Today, the cast list of luminaries is a little lower down the celebrity ladder. I ventured down to the coast again to meet up with Bianca Gascoigne, stepdaughter of footballer Gazza, at the infamous Nikki Beach bar. As we spoke, hundreds of half-naked young people began spraying vintage champagne on each other in a four-hourly exercise called, naturally, Champagne Spray Party.
'Do you think this is a sensible thing to be doing in the middle of a recession?' I asked Bianca. 'Absolutely not,' the cheeky minx replied, 'but it's definitely a fun thing to do!'
And that is the attitude of most of the revellers in Marbella. 'Having fun' is the order of the day, and as much of it as you can possibly cram into 24 hours.
'I'm meeting up with Calum Best later,' Bianca giggled, conjuring up the mind-boggling prospect of a Best and a Gascoigne getting drunk together.
One reason the celebrities at each end of the ladder love it so much is that nobody in Marbella, outside of the expats like Max Clifford, seems to care very much what you get up to or what you did in your past.
I found one legendary old rogue, Princess Diana's cad James Hewitt, running a smart new restaurant called the Polo House in Marbella's most exclusive street.
'I had to get away from Britain,' he admitted, 'and this has been the perfect refuge for me. There are no paparazzi, nobody bothers me except when I am happy to be bothered in the restaurant, and I've found the peace and privacy that I could never have back home.
'It's also a very comfortable lifestyle here. But there are two very different worlds. Since the cheap easyJet flights came in, all the hen and stag parties have started flooding into Puerto Banus, and that's changed the character a little from the quite smart, glamorous place it used to be.
'It's also driven the really rich people out a bit, tucked away in the secluded areas on the outskirts.'
That's indisputably true. But the rich still head down to the port occasionally to hit their credit cards in one of the world's most expensive shopping precincts.
I went shopping with former Birmingham City soccer boss Karren Brady. She's about to join Lord Alan Sugar as his new Apprentice sidekick, so should know a thing or two about business. But watching her sweep through Gucci, Prada and Fendi like a human vacuum cleaner was a terrifying spectacle.
Her eyes alighted on a rather plain-looking handbag. 'Oooh, that's lovely,' she cooed. 'You can never have enough handbags.' This one boasted a price tag of £15,000.
'Who the hell buys this kind of thing?' I gasped.
'Oh, there's a lot of serious wealth in Marbella,' she chuckled. 'And they come down to Puerto Banus for the glamour, the yachts, the celebrities, the shops. There are two sides to this place. But both sides are quite fun. It's part euro, part trash.'
And that, at its heart, is Marbella. A place to retire to, party in, make a fortune, spend a fortune, drink shots, get shot --whatever takes your fancy.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/article-1242085/Piers-Morgan-heads-Marbella-Spains-Butlins-billionaires.html#ixzz0cUYOMKHk