FLASH
Shkruar nga Pamfleti
Attracted by Gibraltar's proximity to drug markets and scrupulous money-laundering services, gangs from the Netherlands, Morocco, Albania and Britain also compete for a share of the market for hashish smuggled from North Africa or cocaine shipped from South America. .
It's a good time at Bar Sinatra. A sign on the wall says "no credit cards". A group of tanned and tattooed men are sipping vodka and tonics while gazing at superyachts. Parked outside is a black and gold Rolls-Royce, guarded by a man dressed in black.
Welcome to the crime capital of the Mediterranean.
Once known as a haven for escaped British criminals, the Costa del Sol has reportedly moved into another, more dangerous league: Marbella, known for its expensive property and wonderful nightlife oases, has become the global headquarters - and the playground - for a multinational group of organized criminal gangs.
" It's the United Nations of organized crime, as one police detective called it. Marbella is a place where gangs can do their work – but where they can also enjoy life in restaurants, villas and beautiful bars ," says Nacho Carretero, a Spanish journalist whose reporting on this dark underworld was the basis for Marbella, a television drama adapted from real events, whose first season. began broadcasting in Spain on Thursday.
The Sinatra Bar was apparently once a retreat for some on Britain's "wanted" list. Today I'm joined at the counter by Dave, 40, who tells me he's done "very well" in real estate and holds up his wrist to show off a chunky gold Rolex.
Outside, young people cruise along the pier in Lamborghinis and Maseratis, tourists lingering behind to take pictures. In the TV series, the narrator says: "A car in Marbella is more than a transport system, it defines, places and marks you."
Some of the gangster "soldiers" are said to have tattooed Kalashnikovs on their foreheads. A simple star, on the contrary, indicates an Albanian gang.
" In Madrid, a kid with tattoos driving a car like that would probably be stopped by the police to see what he was doing, but in Marbella it's completely normal. They can't resist showing it off, they make all this money, they like to have something bling ," a well-known British resident tells me the next day.
More than 100 criminal gangs from 59 nationalities are estimated to operate from this popular tourist haven, including the Serbian mafia, Swedish biker gangs and the Italian mafia. On Thursday, Spanish police announced they had dismantled a German gang that was using heavily armed Colombian "soldiers" for protection. They operated from a restaurant in Puerto Banus, just down the road from Marbella and a few doors away from Bar Sinatra.
Attracted by Gibraltar's proximity to drug markets and scrupulous money-laundering services, gangs from the Netherlands, Morocco, Albania and Britain also compete for a share of the market for hashish smuggled from North Africa or cocaine shipped from South America. .
Occasionally, this leads to violence: there have been shootings, as well as cases of horrific torture, sometimes carried out in luxury villas occupied by gangs.
One victim had holes drilled in her legs. Another recently turned up with his back cut to pieces from days of flogging after a drug haul went missing. The badly disfigured corpses are dumped by the roadside in the hills outside Marbella.
At the same time, today's mobsters have been willing to work together when it suits their needs. In Carretero's TV series, a retired boss of Italy's Calabrian mafia, the 'NDrangheta, plays a daring mediator who settles disputes and brokers alliances.
He is "a bit like the secretary-general of the UN", says Carretero, and is "a mixture of real personalities who act as intermediaries between gangs on the Costa del Sol".
The Dutch generally deal directly with the Colombians to arrange drug shipments in food containers sent to Algeciras, 50 miles south of Marbella. Illegal goods are often guarded by the Camorra, an Italian criminal gang from Naples. Albanians and Kosovars supply weapons and muscles. Meanwhile, British criminals help launder the profits.
The TV series' protagonist is a smooth-talking Spanish lawyer hired by a British crime boss to protect one of his henchmen, from Liverpool, who has gone on a drug-fueled spree, beating up several Spanish men in a disco and shooting at a cop during a high-speed chase in his bright yellow sports car.
The lawyer manages to get him off with a small fine. "They can't touch us," the Brit shouts to fellow gang members from Liverpool as they celebrate his release with a pool party surrounded by women in bikinis.
" It used to be just the bosses who lived here but now it's the whole organisation, including the soldiers, so you have these kids from the streets of Liverpool or Dublin, they often get into trouble for bad behaviour ," says Carretero.
For Francis Butler, 71, who moved to Marbella from London in the 1980s, the country has undergone "a complete change in the last ten years". Likewise the restaurant Finca Besaya, which he bought years ago, but which he no longer has.
" It's become like Paris Lido, with dancing girls ," he says, adding that things started to change when the Russians arrived in the 1990s.
" I remember wondering if we should have a Russian menu in the restaurant ," says Butler. Now the country is flooded with people from all over the world. Young members of Latin American gangs have settled in some of the luxury villas abandoned for most of the year by their owners.
"I know people who have lived for 20 or 30 years in some areas with beautiful houses and gardens. They tell me there are Bentleys cruising at night - but filled with people you really don't want to see, " adds Butler, who sold the restaurant a few years ago and moved to Cadiz.
Police say they lack the resources, personnel and technology to deal with the gang threat.
There was recent alarm in Spain and the Netherlands when a gang boss wanted in connection with threats to kidnap former Dutch Prime Minister Marc Rutte and Princess Amalia, heir to the Dutch throne, was inexplicably released on bail for a sum of €50,000 by a Spanish court despite an official request to expedite his extradition home.
Karim Bouyakhrichan, 46, took control of a vast drug smuggling ring when his billionaire brother, Samir "Scarface" Bouyakhrichan, was shot dead in a shopping center near Marbella in 2014. He was arrested when dozens of police raided his villa his near Marbella in January. Five others were arrested, some of them believed to be Spaniards who helped launder the drug lord's wealth through the local property market.
Bouyakhrichan, a model for one of the characters in the TV series, has now disappeared. Officials said his release was an innocent "mistake." But some Spanish commentators wondered if the judicial system was corrupt./ Adapted "Pamphlet" from " The Times "
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