MARBELLA CLUB

 

You’ll need a car to reach Ojen. It was made famous by a local liqueur and Julio Iglesias has a home here. It’s heaven for nature lovers, set in the mountains just above Marbella and is definitely worth a detour, not just for a taste of some fine Spanish wines, but for a feel for the quieter side of Marbella, where birdsong and the whizz of mopeds are the soundtrack in spring and summer. This is Malaga’s “spiritual” home, but it’s not just wines that are on display or for tasting. Resident guide Antonio will tell you it’s Ojen’s own special Eau-de-Vie (a concoction of aniseed and aromatic herbs that packs quite a punch) that originally put the Ojen on the worldwide map. In 1840 a man called Pedro Morales started distilling the special liqueur but he kept the recipe a secret. Soon, visitors were asking for a “copita de Ojen” in bars around Spain and it was exported all over the world. Picasso probbly enjoyed a swig or two – he immortalised a bottle of the anisette liqueur in his work “Bodegon Espanol”. But after being passed down from father to eldest son over four generations, one father died suddenly before he had the chance to pass the formula on, so the recipe remains a mystery. Also worth visiting: The local 16th-century church with its square minaret-style Mudejar tower; the Caves of Ojen; the Los Chorros fountain; and Juanar Palace, a very old hunting lodge (game is still shot here) that is now a hotel and restaurant, set in the hiker’s and rider’s paradise in the Sierra Blanca mountains.

 

Civil Guard have released details of a bare-faced drug smuggling operation which brought cannabis onto the beaches of Marbella in broad daylight as sunbathers looked on, then sped their cargo away in vehicles waiting on the beach. The drugs were jet-skied onto the beach, as accomplices hiding out in nearby scrubland ran out to help unload and transfer the cannabis off the sand.Officers seized 2.5 tons of cannabis and arrested 10 of the drug runners, with property searches taking place in Benalmádena, Fuengirola and Mijas. 10,000 € in cash were also seized.Another 3 people are suspected in the case.

Martin Hickman, 49, of Marbella, made £6m profit over four years selling fake and unlicensed Viagra-like prescription drugs. He was jailed for three months in 2007 for failing to close the websites, but just weeks later the M.E.N revealed how he was continuing to trade from behind bars.

The cash funded a lavish lifestyle including a £500,000 country home, a £2.4m Chelsea flat and a home in Marbella.
His Range Rover had a personalised number plate with his initials on and his Bentley had the number plate 'L13 RGE'.

Between 2003 and 2007 Hickman, a former businessman who was made bankrupt in 1998 after being jailed for 10 months for conspiracy to trade in steroids, pocketed £3.4m himself running the enterprise from his farmhouse in Lily Lanes, Ashton under Lyne. He later moved his factory to a nearby office above a shop in Market Avenue. But experts say he was playing 'Russian roulette' with his customers' health. He was caught out selling the fake and unlicensed drugs on his MSH World Traders website after a tip-off triggered a four-year probe by the government department Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).
Hickman was sentenced to three months in jail and fined £20,000 for contempt of court in April 2007 after he became the first retailer in Britain to be convicted of failing to abide by a High Court injunction to close the illegal websites.
But within days of going to jail, the M.E.N ordered Kamagra tablets - a generic and cheaper version of Viagra - from his company's website. investigator was sent a batch of 'Lovegra' tablets, which is another name for Kamagra. We bought eight tablets and were given another eight 'free' at a total cost of £32 plus £5 postage and packaging. Hickman's website offered a wide range of 'erectile dysfunction' medication and boasted there were no prescription, consultation or administration charges. It is believed that most of the medicines he sold were produced in India.
The website offered to supply a maximum of three months' medication in one order.Experts say that if the drugs are taken without an initial assessment by a GP, users run the risk of suffering serious side effects - including a heart attack.
Hickman is due to be sentenced today (Monday June 8th) at Southwark Crown Court in London after pleading guilty to six charges of selling and supplying counterfeit and unlicensed medicines and money laundering the sum of £1.4m. The M.E.N test purchase was one of the offences Hickman pleaded guilty to. He has already paid about £1m in an out of court settlement after civil action against him by pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. A MHRA spokesman said: "There is a risk to public health because when you buy these products via the internet you do not know where they have been manufactured, how they have been stored and what the true content of the medicines are. "Tablets could have the correct basic ingredient but also be contaminated with other substances. "Prescription drugs have significant risks and possible adverse affects if used improperly - without patient's first having a consultation with their GP." Mick Deats, MHRA Head of Enforcement, said: "We have people with no medical qualification whatsoever running websites and running multi-million pounds businesses. "It is a really risky practice to turn to the internet for your medicines. People often use the internet to buy these drugs because they are too embarrassed to go to their doctor or because they wouldn't be prescribed them. And if something goes wrong that could mean they are more reluctant to seek treatment."
MHRA officers did a test purchase from his MSH website and officers raided his home.
They found various erectile dysfunction drugs plus orders, cash, cheques and customer lists. Hickman was interviewed in August and December 2005 but said he was just running a call centre and doing nothing illegal. His website at the time was registered in Germany with an internet service provider - outside the MHRA jurisdiction. But in March 2006 the agency did another test purchase and bought a multi-pack of drugs which included counterfeit Viagra - which is made under licence by Pfizer. A High Court injunction was issued in September 2006 ordering him to shut down the websites but he failed to do so and was jailed in April 2007.
The following month the M.E.N investigated Hickman and made the test purchase.
In August 2007 Hickman's assets were restrained under the Proceeds of Crime Act - including bank accounts, his house, and cars. And the MHRA continued to pursue him because he continued to trade. In January 2008 he appeared in court at the City of London Magistrates Court and was committed to Crown Court in April. 2008. He pleaded guilty to six charges in March this year.

Juan Antonio Roca was arrested for corruption in March 2006, police seized assets worth 2.4 billion euros ($3.4 billion), including a century-old palace in Madrid, a country estate equipped with a helipad overlooking the Rock of Gibraltar and a stud farm guarded by a tiger. According to a 451-page July 2007 indictment by Marbella prosecutor Miguel Angel Torres, Roca also owned a ranch to raise fighting bulls, a private jet, a helicopter and a painting by Spanish master Joan Miro.

Known in Marbella as “The Boss,” Roca has become Spain’s national symbol of municipal corruption amid the boom and bust of the country’s real estate industry.

“Marbella is a special case, but the conditions which allowed it to occur exist across the country,” says Jesus Sanchez-Lambas, a law professor and general secretary of Madrid’s Ortega y Gasset University Institute. “Corruption in town planning is institutionalized.” Roca, 55, who was convicted of bribing a judge in August by the High Court of Andalusia in Granada, is currently standing trial at Spain’s National Court in Madrid where, along with five other defendants, he’s charged with embezzling 36 million euros of public funds. Prosecutors are preparing to go to trial in connection with the 2007 indictment, dubbed Operation Malaya, against Roca and 85 others in Marbella, Madrid, Barcelona and San Sebastian. The charges include embezzlement, money laundering, dereliction of duty and bribery.

Roca’s lawyer, Jose Anibal Alvarez, said in December that none of the evidence proves that Roca took bribes, embezzled from city hall or laundered money. Spanish officials are making him a scapegoat for the corruption that’s widespread in city halls across Spain, he says. In December, Roca was in prison in Alhaurin de la Torre, a village outside Marbella.

Graft and bribery thrived along the Costa del Sol as the country rode a 15-year real estate boom, fueled by a plunge in interest rates, rising incomes and strong demand for second homes by sun-starved Northern Europeans. In 2006 -- the peak of Spain’s real estate surge -- municipalities issued 911,000 building permits, more than the U.K. and Germany combined. “They are swallowing up the coastline and the countryside,” Sanchez-Lambas says. “This is the legacy we will leave for our children.” Many of these homes have come onto the market in the past year after the global credit crunch curbed the supply of loans. R.R. de Acuna & Asociados, a Madrid-based real estate research firm, estimates that there are more than 1.6 million unsold homes in Spain, while annual demand for housing fell to 220,000 units in 2008 from a peak of 590,000 in 2004. Spain’s economy contracted for the first time in 15 years in the third quarter of 2008, after growing 3.9 percent in 2006. This year, it faces its worst recession since 1959, according to Dominic Bryant, an economist at BNP Paribas SA in London. Unemployment soared to 12.8 percent in October from 8.5 percent a year earlier. Spanish bank loans in arrears as a proportion of total lending climbed in October to 2.9 percent, or 54.2 billion euros from 0.9 percent a year earlier, according to the Bank of Spain. “We are seeing an intense increase in the ratio of bad loans,” Bank of Spain Governor Miguel Angel Fernandez Ordonez said on Oct. 30. “This has been particularly notable in the construction and real estate sectors.” Spain sowed the seeds of its real estate boom when it agreed to swap its currency for the euro. Before joining Europe’s monetary union in 1999, Spain had to impose economic discipline and bring down its inflation rate to European Union standards. After it did, the cost of home loans tumbled as the central bank slashed its benchmark rate to less than 3 percent at the end of 1998 from 13 percent in 1993. Household incomes rose as Spanish women began to enter the workforce, and foreign investment jumped more than 10-fold at its peak in 2007 as the euro brought financial stability. The newfound wealth and borrowing power created a potential bonanza for Spain’s 8,111 town halls, which have limited powers to raise taxes yet have to pay for local police, garbage collection and sports facilities. Spanish law does give the municipalities power to grant all permits for new homes, shopping centers and factories. “All they’ve got is land,” says Lorenzo Fernandez Fau, a former mayor of El Escorial, near Madrid. “So they’ve sold it.” Even many legal projects involve the mayor’s cutting a deal with developers, who may agree to build fire stations or put up street lamps in addition to paying for building permits.
Some officials also demand bribes. “Local administrators have the power to decide who gets rich and who stays poor,” says Victor Torre de Silva, a professor of law at Madrid’s Instituto de Empresa business school. “There’s a great temptation to share in the wealth that you can create.” That temptation may have ensnared Roca, who began his career as anything but wealthy. A native of Cartagena in the region of Murcia, which neighbors Andalusia, Roca trained as a mining engineer and then set up a property development company called Comarsa that was declared bankrupt in 1990. The following year, he moved to Marbella. At the time, the town was known for its celebrity residents, including King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, who built a palace modeled after the White House in Washington, except that the bathroom fittings were made of gold, according to Gorka Zamarreno, communications director of real estate company Aifos SA, who attended a party there.

GANGWAR has broken out between Britain's most powerful cocaine gangs in the Spanish Costas.A club security boss was shot five times in a bungled hit in the millionaires' paradise of Marbella this week as coke barons wrestle for control of the UK's £2billion-a-year trade.Last month a known contract killer was murdered in Spain while an Irish hitman was stabbed in the shoulder.In the latest attack, the security boss from Liverpool was blasted in the face, arms and pelvis by a man who is also thought to be from Merseyside.He remains in a serious condition in intensive care. The bloodbath follows the murder of Britain's top drugs trafficker, Colin "Smigger" Smith in Liverpool last November. Underworld sources say he was shot on the orders of two former associates, one known as the Bird of Prey. The pair are now trying to take control of his empire, which he ran out of the resort of Puerto Banus in Marbella.In the past month, gangsters loyal to Smith have sought revenge.
They include a shadowy group of former IRA hitmen known as The Cleaners.But before they could strike one of their gunmen was killed said to be by the Bird of Prey.

Police and forensic experts inspect the scene of the shooting in Puerto Banús last night The man was shot as he left a cafeteria in Calle Ramón Areces, to walk to his car, a dark blue British registered BMW which he had left illegally parked with the windows open.

The victim was said by witnesses to be a man in his 30's from Liverpool who has been resident in Marbella for some years. A man in his 30’s, first reported to be Eastern European by some sources, but now considered to be British by most media, has been injured in a shooting incident in a cafeteria in Puerto Banús, Marbella. At least five shots were fired in the port at 7,30pm last night, according to emergency service sources, with four of the shots hitting the man in the face after a first shot to the knee. He is reported to be seriously injured. Witnesses described the victim as a tall and athletic blonde man, and say he is British, from Liverpool, and has been living in Marbella for several years. They say the shooter, who is also thought to be British, talked to him for some time before opening fire.
Police think that what was the third shooting in the town in less than a month, was a possible settling of criminal scores.

Spanish police were waiting yesterday to interview 39-year-old Peter Mitchell, who is expected to make a full recovery from his injuries. Mitchell, who fled to Spain in 1996, had been one of a number of gangsters targeted in a major state operation against the Gilligan gang.Security sources in the Republic last night linked the murder bid on the Spanish coast to a new campaign by rival Irish criminals against Gilligan and his associates. Earlier this month it was revealed that Gilligan was receiving 24-hour protection inside Portlaoise to safeguard him from other prisoners.
Rival criminals are angry over his recent interview in Irish pop magazine Hot Press, via a mobile phone. This contributed to a security crackdown, which has affected the operations of other gang leaders inside. A Gardai source said: 'Up until then, a number of jailed criminals were still able to run their empires from inside. Now they can't communicate with their teams and they blame Gilligan for that.'Gilligan was badly beaten up by a young Dublin criminal in front of other inmates. And these rivals are not just prepared to go after him it seems; they have the team and the firepower to hunt down the remaining members of his old gang, most of whom are now in Spain.'