Marbella rocked by vast property corruption scandal

Spain, no stranger to shady dealings, has been stunned and shamed as the former planning supremo of Marbella, the Costa del Sol's playground for the superrich, faces trial for the country's most spectacular corruption scandal.

Eighty-six members of Marbella's power elite, including two former mayors, are accused of embezzlement on an unprecedented scale. The alleged mastermind was Juan Antonio Roca, accused of taking backhanders from builders and bribing councillors to rubber- stamp illicit property developments. Police seized nearly [euro]1m in cash at the home of his lawyer.

Once an unemployed builder, Mr Roca allegedly gave the former mayor Marisol Yague [euro]1.3m ([pound]800,000) in bribes, slipped to her in plain envelopes, funding a facelift and home improvements costing [euro]950,000. The deputy mayor, Isabel Marcos, had [euro]360,000 in cash at her home, while Mr Roca accumulated an art collection worth [euro]30m, including a valuable Miro, displayed in his steaming Jacuzzi. When prosecutors investigated 18 shell companies registered in tax havens worldwide to launder the ill- gotten profits, they found not one legitimate business transaction.

Mr Roca's rise to riches began in 1991, when he became the right- hand man of Marbella's flamboyant mayor, Jesus Gil. He subsequently amassed a [euro]120m fortune, according to the 450-page indictment issued recently by judge Miguel Angel Torres, made mainly from the greed and easy money of Spain's long property boom. Town halls throughout Spain were caught up in the tide of illegality, but the sheer baroque excess of the Marbella scandal dwarfed them all. Last year the government dissolved the entire council and installed a management committee.

The beach paradise has fallen a long way from the days when it was favoured by Europe's rich and beautiful, with names like Bismarck, Rothschild, Metternich and Thyssen. Regulars such as Roger Moore and Sean Connery sold up when Marbella became a byword for vulgar show during Gil's megalomaniac administration, and brash housing developments blocked their sea view.

That was the era when more conspicuous jet-setters moved in. The late King Fahd of Saudi Arabia regularly brought a 3,000-strong entourage to his Marbella palace, the arms dealer Adnan Kashoggi's gold-tapped yacht sat in the harbour, and the Syrian arms traff icker Monzer al-Kassar orchestrated deals from his mansion, until he was arrested in June on an international arrest warrant issued by the US, accused of supplying rocket launchers and machine guns to Colombia's Farc guerrillas.

There remain Russian and Italian drug-running maf ias who resolve turf wars with shoot-outs: last week police detained five members of the Mazzarella family, suspected of a leading role in the Neapolitan Camorra. The family had long used Marbella as a base for trafficking drugs from Morocco.

Gil resigned in 2002, engulfed in financial scandals, and died in 2004. According to investigators, Mr Roca effectively bought his successors as mayor, Julian Muoz and Ms Yague, both of whom are now in jail awaiting trial. Police seized more than [euro]45,000 in cash from the home of Mr Muoz's girlfriend, the singer Isabel Pantoja, which she said she used for household expenses.

"Some of Marbella's councillors were on Mr Roca's payroll. They were rewarded for their loyalty and submission," Judge Torres wrote. He says Mr Roca bent these councillors to his will, charged property developers for licences and permits, and laundered profits through companies set up solely to manage and conceal the enterprise. Assets sequestered and seized by the authorities total some [euro]2.4bn.

Mr Roca accumulated two vast Andalusian estates, including an orange grove, luxury hotels, three palaces in Madrid, a stud farm with fighting bulls and 103 thoroughbred horses, beach-side housing developments, a heliport, a private plane, and artworks worth [euro]30m. When police raided his homes in April last year, they confiscated 275 paintings, including works by Picasso, and stuffed animals, including a polar bear and the heads of an elephant and a rhinoceros.

Further reading 'Cocaine Nights', by J G Ballard (Flamingo, [pound]7.99)

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