MARBELLA CLUB

Leonidas Vargas became the ideal contact for new generations of drug traffickers who sent drugs to Europe, among them Daniel “El Loco” Barrera. Nevertheless, Vargas’ luck changed in July 2006 when Spanish authorities detected his activities and arrested him. A few months ago he was placed under house arrest because of his delicate state of health, as he had serious heart problems. In July of this year a trial was to begin against him. That is where some of the reasons for his murder could lie. In the drug trafficking world it is said that behind the crime could be Barrera and Pedro Oliverio Guerrero alias “Cuchillo,” another of Vargas’ partners. They may have decided that they didn’t want to run the risk that “El Viejo” would implicate them at the trial, which would complicate even further their legal situation. In addition, Vargas was no longer “useful” because for the last two years he had been in prison and in that time those two traffickers had made new European contacts to smuggle drugs through Venezuela. With Vargas’ death the last representative of a generation of drug traffickers has been annihilated.
murder of Leonidas Vargas caused a big stir in both Spain and in Colombia, but because of two different reasons. The Spaniards could not get over their surprise over the way in which the crime occurred. And in Colombia many ask themselves who is responsible for the death of the last of the big drug trafficking capos who emerged in the 1980s.

Although for the Spaniards Vargas was a complete unknown, his death occupied newspaper headlines there. That is not surprising. The Colombian drug trafficker, known by the alias “El Viejo” or “The Old Man,” was assassinated last Thursday by two contract killers who entered his room on the fifth floor of Hospital 12 de Octubre in Madrid where he had been hospitalized for a week. With a pistol with a silencer and in front of another patient who was in the same room, the killers shot him four times and fled. In Spain, crimes like that aren’t common. That is why the case has caused such shock.

In Colombia, where unfortunately it isn’t that unusual for assassins to enter hospitals to finish off their victims, Vargas’ death caused a lot of unease, especially in the mafia world. At 59 years of age, Vargas had been involved in the drug trafficking business for more than three decades. At the end of the 70s he met Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha, alias the 'Mexicano.’ With that mafia head, Vargas became a part of the Medellín cartel. His center of operations was always in Caquetá and in Putumayo, in the south of Colombia, from where he supplied drugs for the “Mexicano,” Pablo Escobar and the Ochoa brothers among other cartel members. In little time he amassed a great fortune and became one of the most powerful mafia capos in the country. In 1993 he was arrested by police in Cartagena and received two sentences of 19 and 26 years in prison for illegal enrichment, drug trafficking, homicide and arms possession. In 2001 he was freed after obtaining reductions in his sentences in reward for studying and working. After leaving prison he lived for a while in Chile but later moved with some of his family to Spain. Although he no longer had debts with justice and had been able to save a big part of his illegal fortune, excessive ambition led Vargas to continue in the “business.” In 2003 he was investigated by the Colombian Fiscalía, the prosecutor general’s office, because a private plane of his loaded with drugs crashed in Honduras. He was exonerated but the two investigators who launched the investigation were dismissed afterwards when it was discovered that there had been irregularities in the case.

Cops in LA charged 30-year-old Marlo "Bow Wow" Jones with robbery and burglary with the special allegation that the crime was in furtherance of a street gang. Well, that's good news, you say. Now for the bad news. You see, "Bow Wow" was part of an initiative hatched in the City of the Angels to fight gangs. In other words, Jones was one of those "former gang members" who was receiving LA tax-payers' funds to work with inner city youth to convince them not to join gangs.This particular "former gang member" had been making appearances with USC football coach Pete Carroll and others as part of the city's gang reduction efforts. In addition, Jones, like others, was getting public funds courtesy of LA City Council member Janice ("Big Bucks") Hahn, who was doling money out in her role as an "anti-gang crusader".Jones, a "former member" of the Grape Street Crips, who had served seven years for robbery and drug violations, also pleaded guilty last October to a charge of spousal abuse and received five years probation. He was involved in a group called "Unity One", a sub-contractor of the Toberman Neighborhood Center. He is charged with being involved in a January 5 robbery of a rap-singer at the Universal City Hilton.

Peruvian crime bosses convicted of drug trafficking charges over the past several years owe the government 177 million soles in civil compensation, reported state prosecutor Sonia Medina.The Peru lawyer told Andina news agency that among these criminal leaders, Fernando Zevallos founder of Aerocontinente airlines, was the convict that owed the most money.It was reported that Zevallos, who began serving a 20-year sentence in 2005 for having ties to a drug ring known as "Los Norteños", owes the State 100 million soles.Zevallos, who was placed on the 10 most dangerous drug traffickers list in the United States, was also under investigation in Chile for money laundering.Also on the list of drug traffickers that owe Peru money are a gang of 33 people from the Tijuana cartel, who began serving 25 - 35 year sentences in 2007 for attempting to take 1.7 tons of cocaine to Mexico from the Chimbote port in Peru.

Charles Elroy Laplace there was no slap-up last supper of the type served on Death Row in America, nor the company of a reassuring pastor. Instead, he was bound hand and foot and cast on to a grubby mattress in the corner of his fetid cell, then left for eight hours to contemplate his impending fate. Paralysed and rendered incontinent with fear, Laplace lay there all night, begging the Lord for mercy and pleading for someone to call his mother or his lawyer - anyone who might save him at the last.But his wretched entreaties were drowned out by the singing of his prison guards, who saw fit to celebrate his coming execution with a rum-fuelled 'gallows party' that lasted long into the small hours. It was not until 8am the following morning that Laplace's torment was finally brought to an end. As the death knell tolled in Her Majesty's Prison, Basseterre, capital of the Caribbean islands of St Kitts & Nevis, and a crowd gathered outside the forbidding crimson gates, he was frogmarched ten paces to an ancient wooden gallows inside the jail. Built for multiple hangings, the gibbet had three separate nooses and Laplace's head was covered with a white hood and placed in one of them. The 40-year-old bakery van driver just had time to wish his six children a happy life and mutter his forgiveness for the trial judge who had sentenced him to death, before the lever was thrust forward and the boards fell away beneath him. Soon news of his execution spread through the island and his murdered wife's family raised a triumphal flag - then the rum began to flow again. This probably sounds like some gruesome scene from the West Indies of bygone days, when ruthless white sugar plantation bosses routinely lynched their troublesome black serfs on these shores, often in public to set an example. Yet although the gallows where Laplace was dispatched were, indeed, built in the mid-19th century, in fact this most unmerciful execution took place just three weeks ago. The macabre ritual was described to me this week, with shockingly dispassionate candour, by the hangman who dispatched Laplace, a local character named Simeon Govia. Unshaven and gaunt, Mr Govia, aged 47, is no master executioner in the Albert Pierrepoint mode, of that we can be sure.Paradise lost: There were 23 murders in St Kitts last year which has a population of just 46,000
In fact, he admits that he was hired because he has family ties to a senior prison official, performed his first execution after a five-minute 'lesson' from an officer, and had no idea what would happen until his victim fell. Small wonder, for he usually makes his living by massaging British female tourists on the beaches of this supposedly idyllic volcanic outcrop (and bedding them where possible, he told me with a gap-toothed grin). He claims he volunteered for the job of St Kitts official hangman - a role that has been vacant for ten years since the last execution was carried out here - because he believes passionately in 'an eye for an eye'. However, as he charges just £30 for providing his sensual rub-downs and the government offered him a fee of £1,800 to dispatch Laplace, perhaps that was not the only reason why this roving gigolo was so keen to make a temporary career switch.
'That guy went as good as gold, man,' Mr Govia told me. 'He didn't whimper or holler. He was very brave and knew he had to go through with it. He didn't suffer, either. I pushed the lever and he was gone in an instant.' Had he suffered nightmares the night before he did the deed?'No man. The guards put me in a room and gave me a tot of whisky and nice food, and I slept sound. There are eight more guys on Death Row, and when they want me to hang the next one I'll be more than ready to oblige.' That day will surely come very soon. For despite recent U.S. research suggesting that capital punishment is not an effective deterrent to murder, and a worldwide trend towards its abolition, senior politicians in St Kitts & Nevis are convinced it is the only effective answer to the violent crime epidemic sweeping the island. A generation ago, murders were a rarity here. Now this tiny Commonwealth country - Britain's first colony in the Caribbean - is in the grip of a terrifying gang war which has made it, statistically, the murder capital of the world, with a record 23 killings last year among a population of just 46,000. It is highly unlikely that Prime Minister Denzil Douglas will mention this unwanted distinction this morning when he makes a speech at the airport to welcome the first holidaymakers off the inaugural British Airways flight direct to St Kitts. However, with the sugar industry having recently collapsed and the pair of islands - which measure just 23 miles long by five miles wide - now totally dependent on tourism, Mr Douglas is acutely aware that the murder of just one foreign visitor could spell disaster for the economy.The cane Harvest - but falling sugar prices has meant the tiny island has become more dependent on tourismIf he has any doubts as to its likely effects, he need only look to neighbouring Antigua, where empty hotel rooms and half-deserted beaches are the legacy of last summer's brutal shooting of Welsh honeymoon couple Ben and Catherine Mullany. With the credit crunch taking a toll on winter bookings in the Caribbean, similar fears are gripping leading politicians throughout the crime-plagued West Indian archipelago. And so, ignoring a clamour of protest led by Amnesty International and other human rights organisations, they are dusting down gallows that have stood idle for decades, ready to resume hanging on a scale not seen since the most draconian days of British rule. These former colonies are now fiercely independent nations, of course, but they have retained the British legal system, and although capital punishment for murder was finally abolished in their mother country 40 years ago, it has remained on their statute books.

Death sentences have therefore continued to be handed down for the most gruesome killings for many years - but they are often set aside by the Privy Council in London, which remains the final court of appeal for many Commonwealth countries.
For a variety of reasons, the Privy Council often rules capital punishment 'unconstitutional'. And if defence lawyers can drag a case on for more than five years, hanging is commuted to life imprisonment on humanitarian grounds because the murderer is deemed to have suffered enough while waiting on Death Row.
Now, though, many Caribbean nations are sick of seeing their courts undermined by out-of-touch legal overlords in dusty chambers 4,000 miles away in London, and they are flexing their muscles.

Determined to deal with violent criminals in their own way, a few years ago they set up their own appeal court - the Caribbean Court of Justice - based in Trinidad. The idea is that this will eventually replace the Privy Council as the islands' court of last resort, thus severing their last legal ties with Britain.
Jamaica - another Caribbean idyll - has decided to keep capital punishment on its statute books because of its high murder rateBut the transitional process is dragging on interminably and in recent weeks, the pressure for draconian justice, Caribbean style, has been rapidly intensifying. In Jamaica, whose population is barely bigger than that of Birmingham, but which last year suffered some 1,300 murders - twice as many as in the whole of Britain - the Senate has just voted to keep hanging on the statute books. No one has been hanged there since 1988 but legal experts believe the drugs-related killing spree has reached such a critical point that it is sure to be resumed soon. Meanwhile, on many smaller islands to which the violence is spreading like a fast-growing tumour, the clamour to bring back the noose grows louder by the day.
In St Vincent, for example, people are demanding the swift execution of Shorn Samuel, 35. He was sentenced to hang a few weeks ago for lassoing a young woman as she waited at a bus stop, and beheading her with a cutlass, simply because she rejected his advances. They are equally eager to string up Patrick Lovelace who was convicted of the abduction of 11-year-old Lokeisha Nanton. He raped the little girl, then hanged her from a mango tree. (His conviction was overturned on a technicality, and his retrial begins on Tuesday). 'There is an overwhelming call here for capital punishment to be resumed,' St Vincent journalist Kirby Jackson says. 'There's a sense of frustration that we are bound by the Privy Council, which is seen as part of an outdated culture. 'Some people don't like hanging because of its historic connotations. They refer back to the Fifties and Sixties in the southern USA, when a lot of black people were wrongly hanged. But as a society we have moved on. We know what is right or wrong in the Caribbean and we are capable of deciding that for ourselves.'
'We must do something to stop the killing'
It is a sentiment I heard echoed in St Kitts repeatedly this week. Hearing about the subject I was researching, people have approached me in the streets to argue passionately for the right to hang criminals without foreign interference. On his weekly radio phone-in show, Prime Minister Douglas insisted that he took 'no comfort' in the recent hanging of Laplace - whose lawyers apparently missed the deadline for an appeal to the Privy Council 'by mistake'. It was simply a matter of allowing the law to take its course, he said solemnly. With an election looming, however, and the premier hoping to win a historic fourth term in office, he knows which way the wind is blowing. Even the island's most senior criminal defence lawyer, Methodist pastor Reginald James, told me he would no longer represent convicted murderers after completing his current caseload, which includes an appeal for a pastor's son alleged to have murdered his sister-in-law. 'We have never had so many killings on this island and we must do something to stop it,' lamented the 68-year-old barrister, adding that as a Christian and patriot, his conscience no longer allowed him to fight to spare murderers from the gallows. Disgorged from the giant cruiseships which dock in Basseterre's scenic harbour for a few hours' shopping and sightseeing, day visitors may still believe they really have landed in 'paradise'.

If they were rash enough to venture a few hundred yards up the hill, to marijuana-scented ghettoes like that around Westbourne Street, however, they would glimpse a very different place. Here, gangs who pathetically model themselves on the Crips and Bloods of Southside Los Angeles - even wearing their blue and red colours - are embroiled in a turf war the viciousness of which makes inner-city Britain seem positively tranquil.

'Hanging won't stop nothing. You check?' one man who called himself Bugie told me indolently. 'It'll just make people do their killing cleaner so they don't get caught.'
'My son should not have died' Business owners are so fearful of these characters that they close shops and offices early to leave for home before the sun sets.
'It's not just that there's crime here - it is the fact it's all so vindictive,' says Lucille Rawlins, a 52-year-old Birmingham woman whose parents emigrated to Britain from St Kitts in the Fifties, and who came to live here four years ago.
Mrs Rawlins was hoping for a tranquil life here only to be brutally mugged. She and her Kittitian husband are now planning to return to the comparative safety of the West Midlands.

On Wednesday another British expat, in his 60s, also required hospital treatment after being beaten by three youths during a robbery at his home in beautiful Frigate Bay.

In desperation the government have just hired a new ' crimebuster', recently retired FBI chief Mark Mershon, who achieved considerable success in fighting the gangs in Oakland, California. In a refrain familiar to many in Britain, Mr Mershon largely attributes the moral degeneration of St Kitts to the breakdown of family life and the rise in the number of single mothers. He has come armed with an impressive action plan and bravely promises a reduction in the murder rate this year. Until he gets results, however, Kittitians will pin their faith on the perceived deterrent effect of the rope. Charles Laplace was no gangster - if we believe his mother, Naomi Williams. He was a 'quiet home-boy' turned temporarily insane by his wife Dian's infidelity.'My son should not have died,' she told me, weeping.'They hanged him out of spite. When I heard they were going to hang him I walked to the Governor General's house and begged him to spare my son but he just said he could do nothing. There were all those other criminals. Why did they have to pick on him?' The answer, though no one will admit as much, is that the government felt the need to make a public statement of intent, and his was the easiest case. I am assured by well-placed officials that it won't be the last. £1,800 a go is still mighty good money
Who, then, will be next to mount the gallows in HMP Basseterre? In the rum houses this week, various names were being touted, including Warrington Phillip, aged 40 - once a local cricket hero who almost made the West Indies test team. He was recently convicted of slashing the throat of his wife, Shermel.

According to well-informed sources, the most likely candidate for the gallows is Romeo 'Buncum' Cannonier, a fearsome criminal for whom many islanders believe hanging to be far too lenient. In 2004, the hulking 'Buncum' shot dead a police officer who had the temerity to walk through his 'manor' at the lonely northern end of St Kitts.

He was duly arrested but from his prison cell he ordered a 'hit' on the informant whose evidence placed him behind bars. However, locals maintain that he evaded conviction for his most nauseating crime. He is said to have abducted a young mother and held her as his sex slave in a disused house for days before strangling her. He reputedly buried her two-year-old daughter alive. The investigation was appallingly mishandled - which is not uncommon here - and so on that occasion, Cannonier, who is in his mid-30s and whose father was hanged for some half-remembered murder, swaggered to freedom. The authorities are said to be determined that he won't cheat justice a second time. Whether his hanging - if it takes places - will stem the bloody tide of murders in paradise remains to be seen, though given that three people were shot just a day after the authorities made an example of Charles Laplace, it seems unlikely. In the final analysis, perhaps the only real winner will be Simeon Govia, the gigolo hangman. In the Caribbean islands the price of life may be all too cheap these days - but £1,800 a go is still mighty good money.

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Sam Taylor the Nepal bureau chief of French news agency Agence France Presse (AFP) has been detained by Kathmandu’s drug squad on the suspicion of possessing drugs, police said.British citizen Sam Taylor was detained from a restaurant in Thamel, the capital’s tourist hub, Friday by a police patrol.An official at the Sorukhutte police station that has jurisdiction over Thamel told IANS that Taylor has been kept under detention for further investigation.Taylor had taken charge in Nepal around three years ago. Prior to this, he had worked in Vietnam for German news agency DPA.
Since the Maoists formed the government last year, Home Minister Bam Dev Gautam has called for an anti-sleaze crackdown in Thamel, known for its infamous massage parlours and dance bars that serve as a front for sex workers.Taylor’s detention comes after a high-profile drug arrest in Singapore last year.In July, Peter Lloyd, the New Delhi-based correspondent of Australian Broadcasting Corporation, was arrested in Singapore for alleged drugs possession while on vacation.

Economic crisis buffeting Spain sent the number of bankruptcies soaring by 182% to 2,864 in 2008, 38% of them in the real estate sector, reveals a new report from PricewaterhoueCoopers.“Between October and December there were more insolvency proceedings than in all of 2007,” says the report, which warns that the commercial courts could collapse under the workload if this trend continues in 2009.Bankruptcies amongst developers and brokers rose from 74 in 2007 to 387 in 2008, and in the construction sector from 182 to 692.The rapidly rising number of property companies being forced into administration, like Martinsa-Fadesa, is likely to have a significant impact on the market. At the very least it should encourage a ‘flight to quality’ amongst buyers looking to avoid the nightmare of dealing with a developer who goes bust.The biggest insolvency proceedings so far are as follows:
Martinsa-Fadesa. A developer that had sales operations in the UK, and has debts of 6.8 billion Euros.
Promociones Habitat. A Barcelona-based developer with debts of 1.7 billion Euros.
Tremón. A developer with projects on the Costa del Sol, and debts of close to 900 million Euros.
Labaro. A Madrid-based developer active all over Spain with debts of 580 million Euros

The pills were hidden in the panels of his Mitsubishi pajero and he was stopped by police as he was driving off the catamaran on July, 9, the night of the World Cup.

When originally arraigned in 2006, Mr Marsden had been charged with importing 28 packets, containing 50,000 ecstasy pills, with the Lacoste crocodile logo embossed on them. He had also been accused of trafficking in the drug.However, two months into the compilation of evidence, court expert Mario Mifsud, a pharmacist, had testified that the pills were not illegal.It turned out that the pills contain the chemical mCPP, which shares several pharmacological properties with MDMA (ecstasy) but was not illegal in Malta when the find was allegedly made.The charges of importing and pushing drugs were subsequently dropped and the Attorney General issued a bill of indictment accusing Mr Marsden of conspiring to deal in ecstasy.Mr Marsden appealed, arguing that since the drugs were not illegal the "charge as it stands is an invention of the Attorney General in his unfettered right to charge as he deems fit".The Court of Criminal Appeal, presided over by Chief Justice Vincent Degaetano, Mr Justice David Scicluna and Mr Justice Joseph Micallef, threw out the appeal and ruled that "a person may be found guilty of, say, conspiracy to import heroin into Malta even though the stuff he eventually brings into Malta turns out to be baking powder. It all depends on what was actually agreed upon between the conspirators and, more specifically, on the object of the conspiracy".The appeals court said that it was not up to it to decide whether "it was "real" ecstasy or "fake" ecstasy, adding that the Attorney General was clearly of the opinion that it was "real" and Mr Marsden disagreed. However, at this point it was up to a jury to decide.

Paul Allen, 30, was accused of involvement in the £53 million robbery at the Securitas depot in Tonbridge, Kent.Depot manager Colin Dixon and his family were kidnapped and members of staff tied up during the armed raid in February 2006.
Jurors have been told that it was masterminded by Allen's best friend and fellow fighter, Lee Murray, who is now in Morocco.But father-of-three Allen, of Chatham, Kent, told the Old Bailey he knew nothing about it, and denied charges of conspiracy to kidnap, rob and possess firearms.Jurors began deliberating in December before the Christmas break and spent more than 27 hours considering their verdicts.They were given a majority direction, meaning the court would accept a decision on which 10 were agreed, earlier this week.But after hearing that they were still unable to reach agreement, trial judge Mr Justice Penry-Davey told jurors: "With regret I have to discharge you from further deliberations and from returning verdicts in this case."A hearing is set to take place next Tuesday to fix a date for a retrial and Allen was remanded in custody.Allen had been in the dock alongside Michael Demetris, a hairdresser who unwittingly prepared disguises for the robbery gang and was cleared by the jury of all charges.In January, five men were convicted of involvement in the heist.Kick boxer Lea Rusha, car salesman Stuart Royle, Albanian Jetmir Bucpapa, and garage owner Roger Coutts were all jailed indefinitely with minimum terms of 15 years.Inside man Emir Hysenaj, an Albanian, who filmed inside the depot using a miniature camera, was given a determinate sentence of 20 years.
Police have only found £21 million of the stolen haul.

Colombian drug trafficker has been shot dead in his bed of a Madrid hospital. Leónidas Vargas Vargas received four shots from a pistol with a silencer after an individual entered his room in the 12 de Octubre Hospital at 8pm last night.
There were two people in room 543 and the assassin asked first which one was Vargas.
Police consider the shooting is almost certainly a settling of scores, with Vargas known as ‘El Viejo’ and to be linked to the Medellín drugs cartel. He was arrested in 2006 but was now granted release because of a lung problem. Police are now studying security tapes to see if the assassin has been caught on camera.

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.

Reporters Without Borders repeated its call for the release of Australian author Harry Nicolaides, facing a charge of the crime of lese-majesty, after he was yesterday refused bail by the Bangkok criminal court for the fourth time.
Australian author Harry Nicolaide%u2019s book Verisimilitude' -- according to one review -- is a "trenchant commentary on the political and social life of contemporary Thailand" Nicolaides, aged 41, who was formally charged on 21 November 2008, has been held at the capital's remand prison since 31 August. The charge relates to his book, Verisimilitude, which came out in 2005 in which he referred to the way an unamed Crown Prince treated one of his mistresses. Only 50 copies were ever printed. "We urge the Australian authorities to do everything within their power to secure the repatriation of Harry Nicolaides as quickly as possible", the worldwide press freedom organisation said. "He is being held in very harsh conditions and his morale is at a very low ebb." His lawyer made a previous request for bail on medical grounds on 22 November. It was rejected on the basis that there was a risk that Nicolaides could flee if he was set free. His brother, Forde Nicolaides, described the outcome as "regrettable".
"Harry is suffering from the difficult conditions at the prison and the terrible effects this is having on his welfare. (...) Ensuring his ability to cope and remain strong is now critical.

Yakuza have for centuries used extensive tattoos as a sign of belonging to any group, as well as to identify its position in the group.Furthermore, when joining the Yakuza peasants and artisans were new, militant-sounding names such as Tiger and Crane, Nine Dragons, roaring storm, etc., which are then applied in the form of paintings on the back or chest.This is often supplemented by artistic excesses and often designs covered the whole body until the head, hands and feet, as well as the genitals.

Paul Merle Eischeid 36, was a Charles Schwab stockbroker before he joined the Hells Angels motorcycle gang in Phoenix, Ariz.He is wanted in connection with the savage beating and stabbing death of a Phoenix woman in 2001, a murder believed to have been committed by several members of the notorious gang.



Cynthia Garcia, 44, was intoxicated when she “mouthed off” to some Hells Angels at their clubhouse in Mesa, Ariz., where she would routinely hang out, according to reports. She was assaulted by some members and warned to keep quiet about it. When she refused, she was viciously attacked, beaten and stabbed. The attackers then threw Garcia into the trunk of a car and drove to a remote location of the desert, where they continued to stab the woman as she lay dying.
It was one of the most grisly murders in recent American criminal history, U.S. Marshals service director John F. Clark said of the crime.Two years later, Eischeid was one of 50 Hells Angels members and associates nabbed in a sweep of motorcycle gang violence in Phoenix. Although he was implicated in Garcia’s kidnapping and murder, a judge allowed him to be released on bail to await trial because he was holding a steady job as a stockbroker and had a relatively clean criminal record, America’s Most Wanted reported.But after his release, Eischeid somehow removed the tracking device he was ordered to wear, and he fled. He hasn’t been heard from since.
Eischeid is now a fugitive, believed to be roaming the country with help from his Hells Angels cronies. He was added to the Marshals’ list of top 15 most wanted last year.“He bounces around from location to location wherever there is a [Hells Angels] member that is willing to take him in,” Deputy U.S. Marshal Matt Hershey said.
The U.S. Marshals have not ruled out the possibility that Eischeid is in another country, as his last confirmed sighting places him in Calgary, Canada, last year. Canadian immigration authorities have since issued a warrant for his arrest.
Eischeid blends in easily due to his appearance, which he cares a lot about. He is well groomed, works out often and is rarely seen without clean clothes, according to Hershey. He is extremely talented with finances, and could be working as an online trader.One conspicuous characteristic of Eischeid’s appearance is his torso, arms and back, which are covered in colorful tattoos.“[His body] is hard to cover up,” Hershey said.Eischeid, who also goes by the name Jason Daniel, is a white male, 5-foot-7 and 190 pounds, with blue eyes and brown hair. His last name is tattooed across his stomach, and “Hell 666 Bound” is on his lower back. He may be wearing glasses.

Paul Hickey entered a guilty plea of ‘homicide, without forethought’. Hickey admitted the killing near Alicante in Spain, but only due to diminished responsibility because of the amount of drugs he had taken. The admission was made as part of a bargaining plea, in which he wants a sentence of no more than 10 years. News of the plea bargain negotiations came as Celine’s heartbroken family arrived at the Spanish courthouse in Elche on the Costa Blanca for the start of the trial.
It is alleged that Hickey left Celine dying in the Spanish holiday apartment for 7 hours. Lawyers for the 31-year-old told a packed Spanish courtroom he should be jailed for ten years for homicide without forethought. “It was a bloody crime but it wasn’t planned, it was with fury and rage,” Hickey’s lawyer said. The court also heard that both Hickey and Celine had drugs in their system on the night of her killing in 2005. Hickey, from Darndale, was accused of beating mum-of-three Celine to death in front of their children at their holiday home in Torrevieja, Alicante on August 27, 2005. The couple had been staying there with their three children now aged 12, nine and five. The prosecution has alleged Hickey beat Celine to death, forced the children to walk past her body and left her dying for seven hours. Dressed in a white and blue tracksuit, Hickey sat at the front of the courtroom while the indictment was read out. None of the Conroy family were permitted inside the court when the hearing got under way before a jury of seven men and four women. Up to 20 members of Celine’s family including her parents Sandra and David arrived at the court this morning. Many members of the Conroy family were dressed in black as they emerged from two people carriers outside the courthouse. News of the plea bargain came within minutes of Hickey arriving in the back of a Guardia Civil van, greeted by a throng of photographers. He stuck his tongue out at them as he was taken into the courthouse. A jury was selected an hour later and the court opened to the public. It is understood the prosecution has advised the Conroy family to agree to the plea-bargain deal. Judge Gracia Serrano Ruiz would then have to formally hear Hickey’s plea and the evidence against him, before imposing sentence. Celine had just turned 28 when she was brutally beaten to death on a Spanish holiday. Prosecutors claimed that Hickey continued to kick and punch her after he knew he had used enough force to kill her. Hickey has been detained in Spain since Celine’s death more than three years ago. The prosecution alleged that the beating was so severe that Celine had all but two of her upper teeth kicked out. “Most of the blows delivered by Hickey were unnecessary to attain his goal of killing Celine Conroy,” according to one prosecution document. “But he continued to beat her forcefully and deliberately to increase her suffering,” it stated. The prosecution alleged that while Celine was lying on the ground, Hickey ordered the children to come out of the bedroom and walk past her battered body. Prosecution documents also alleged that he failed to help her and had a shower before going to bed. The document alleged that Hickey attacked Celine at 9pm and she lay dying until 4am while he slept. He was alleged to have inflicted 35 injuries on Celine as she lay on the ground, with 14 of the wounds to her face and neck.
Celine’s body was not found until 12.15pm the following day, August 27, when Hickey’s aunt, Nora Armitage, let herself in. She immediately called the police who arrested Hickey. The Conroy family spent weeks in a fraught struggle to have their daughter’s remains returned to Ireland. Celine’s heartbroken mother, Sandra, who was battling cancer, turned to Marian Finucane on her RTE radio show to tell her of the problems of having Celine’s body released for burial. After the show, Galway solicitor Tom McGinty rang the show and volunteered his help to the Conroys.
The highlighting of the case also brought a visit from then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern who met Celine’s parents, Sandra and Davy, and said he has asked the Irish Ambassador in Spain to personally intervene to expedite the return of her remains. A candle-lit vigil was held outside Sean Treacy flats in the inner city and hundreds of local people and businesses donated money to help with cost of bringing Celine home. Sandra, with the help of her family, has looked after Celine’s three children since her death. Some 60 days after she was beaten to death, Celine Conroy was finally laid to rest. Her then five-year-old daughter, Chloe, brought a card to the altar which read: “I love you mammy. I miss you, I really miss you. I hope heaven is nice and you’re having a good time. Love, Chloe.” Celine’s aunt Patricia spoke of how Celine spent her summers while she was growing up visiting her home in England.

Irishman has been arrested in England in connection with an investigation into a drug smuggling ring in Spain and Scotland.Five others from Scotland and England were arrested in raids in Marbella on the Costa Del Sol and in Tenerife in the Canary Islands.The Irish man - believed to be from Dublin - was arrested after the lorry he was driving was stopped near Oxford at the end of October.Around 70 kilos of speed was found hidden in a cargo of plastic containers.Cash, luxury cars and a boat were seized in the swoops in Spain.

Ottawa cocaine dealer Hussein El-Hajj Hassan made powerful enemies in the narcotics trade when he bypassed his main supplier, a prosecutor told jurors Tuesday, and that's how he ended up bludgeoned, shot to death and mutilated on Aug. 24, 2004. In her opening statement in the murder trial of one of his alleged killers, assistant Crown attorney Andrea Blakeley said Mark Yegin, a bodyguard to that supplier, drove Mr. Hassan to an isolated forest clearing in the west end where the pair met two other men: Mr. Yegin's boss, Fadi Saleh, and Montreal cocaine dealer Shant Esrabian.Moments later, Mr. Hassan was shot and killed, Ms. Blakeley said. His body was found on June 28, 2005 when Mr. Yegin led police to a grave in a wooded area off Panmure Road. Ms. Blakeley said the Crown expects to present evidence that after the killing, Mr. Hassan's body was dragged into the woods, stripped down to underwear and socks, and buried."You will hear evidence from a forensic anthropologist that prior to being buried - either before or immediately after his murder - his hand was severed from his arm," Ms. Blakeley said. "You will hear from a forensic pathologist that his skull was fractured and that he was shot at least two times."Mr. Yegin had known Mr. Hassan for about four months and worked as "the muscle" for him and his supplier, Fadi Saleh. Ms. Blakeley said Mr. Hassan had become unhappy with the way Mr. Saleh did business and decided to deal directly with Toronto cocaine supplier Rafei Ebrekdjian.In June or July of 2004, Mr. Hassan delivered $200,000 to Mr. Ebrekdjian, intending to buy cocaine directly from him instead of Mr. Saleh, Ms. Blakely said. He then went to Lebanon, staying there for about a month.By August, Mr. Ebrekdjian had received more than $400,000 from Mr. Hassan, who told associates he was expecting a large cocaine delivery on Aug. 21.Ms. Blakeley said Mr. Hassan was planning to meet Mr. Yegin on Aug. 20 and the two men were to meet Paul "Sasquatch" Porter - a top Hells Angels member who was expected to help Mr. Hassan settle a cocaine trafficking problem in Cornwall.There never was a meeting that night with Mr. Porter and Mr. Hassan never reached Cornwall, Ms. Blakeley said. Instead, Mr. Yegin drove Mr. Hassan to the wooded area off Panmure Road, where he was shot.After the Crown's opening, Ottawa police Sgt. Angela McDade testified that shortly after his arrest on June 27, 2005, Mr. Yegin showed police where Mr. Hassan's body was buried.Sgt. McDade said a convoy of three police cruisers reached the wooded area where the body was buried just after 2 a.m.
"As we got closer, (Mr. Yegin) pointed directly to a small mound of leaves," Sgt. McDade said. "It was very obvious he had been there before because he was able to tell us where we were going before we saw any stop signs or street signs."There was a bit of skin exposed. We definitely could smell the body." Soumia El-Hajj Hassan, Mr. Hassan's widow, said she knew that her husband became a cocaine dealer after he served a prison sentence for fraud. Mrs. Hassan said she became concerned when he did not return home on the night of his death and was told by Mr. Hassan's cousins that he had probably been killed. She said she was unable to discover what happened to her husband after questioning his associates, including Mr. Yegin.Tuesday, security at the trial was tight. There were metal detectors at the courtroom entrance and armed police officers inside and outside the court.

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An overabundance of homes in Spain’s beachside playground sends real estate agencies into crisis mode. Faced with rapidly deteriorating demand after decades of growth and construction, one of Europe’s most popular vacation and retirement destinations is showing signs of desperation, now offering buyers a deal usually reserved for corner stores.Left with a surplus of properties after a decade of rapid building to keep pace with the demand of vacationers and second-home buyers from Northern Europe, especially Britain, one developer is offering a buy one, get one free deal on homes along the legendary stretch of coast.Once home to movie stars and European aristocracy, the Costa del Sol, stretching from the regional capital of Malaga to the southernmost point of the country in Tarifa, has lately fallen on hard times thanks to overdevelopment, a faltering global economy and systematic corruption that has left entire towns bankrupt.The region, so dependent on the housing market, was left floundering, driving hundreds of developers and real estate agencies out of business, and forcing the few that remain to extreme measures. Salsa Immobiliaria, located in Malaga, has launched a special, offering a free golf resort apartment when purchasing a $1.1 million seaside home. While offering a free apartment may appear like a dramatic measure, Salsa said it would be preferential to lowering prices any more than they already have. “The price of new housing will not be reduced further because it already has been on several occasions,” Guillermo Chicote told the Spanish newspaper El Pais. “People shouldn’t expect home prices to go down 30 or 40 percent, because I’d as soon give the houses away to the bank before doing that.”
Despite drastic efforts to unload properties across the region, Spain’s coastal real estate problems do not appear to extend to the country’s high-end homes.
“At the top end, prices perhaps doubled in the period up to 2004 or 2005, although since then there’s been no real change. At the bottom end things are quite different: a big over-supply, very few buyers now, prices are falling,” James Stewart of Savills Real Estate told the Financial Times.Outside of high-end pockets along the coast, tourist-heavy towns have suffered due to a glut of construction and a scheme known as “off-plan,” where a buyer pledges to purchase a home before it has been built, making long-term financial stability all the more important.
The downturn on the Costa del Sol is a part of a large, continent-wide challenge, most visible in Ireland and Spain, where inflated home prices and decreasing demand for new construction have left economies reeling.