Gang Wars on the Costa - The True Story of the Bloody Conflict Raging in Paradise. Wensley Clarkson
Consignments pass through the docks mixed with garden furniture and other such legitimate cargos.
Importers can clear a profit of up to £500,000 per container, depending on how many middlemen are involved. The cigarettes end up on sale in pubs and clubs, at car-boot sales and on housing estates. HM Revenue & Customs seize more than a billion illegal cigarettes every year.
However, officials probably only intercept about 10 per cent of smuggled loads. This suggests that up to 10 billion cigarettes are entering the UK illegally.
Unlike trafficking in drugs, there are no steep penalties to deter the black marketeers. The worst they can expect is confiscation and up to seven years in prison, although that is very rare. These ‘businessmen’ write off a certain percentage of their imports to seizures. They simply buy more cigarettes – which means more orders for manufacturers.
In 2000, the then British Home Secretary, David Blunkett, finalised a new fast-track extradition treaty with the Spanish authorities, but it seems to have done little to stem the tide of crime rolling across Spain. The treaty was supposed to be aimed at figures such as the ‘Pimpernel’, a multimillionaire criminal who has been on the run for more than 20 years and is believed to be one of the most senior figures in the British underworld.
Spain’s criminal gangs undoubtedly benefit from the country’s massive 4,900km of coastline, from which drugs shipments can be received from South America, via Morocco or Algeria to the south, and launched into northern Europe, with little fear of detection by police or coastguard patrol boats. Spain’s position as a staging post for drugs from places such as Colombia and Bolivia is also partly a symptom of its colonial past and the language ties between Spain and South America.
One of the most disturbing things about researching this book is the way in which Spain has embraced all the luxuries that we take so much for granted but is now on the verge of returning to its previous Third World status. The economy there is even more shattered than that of the UK. Two million properties remain un-lived in because the building boom has flooded Spain with unwanted housing.
Spain is already well into its first official recession in 15 years – 1.3 million workers lost their jobs in 2008, bringing the jobless total up to 3.2 million. At the time of writing, Spain has the highest unemployment rate in the EU at 13.9 per cent, and it is expected to top the 16 per cent mark by the end of 2009.
So there you have it. A brief insight into why Spain has become the gateway to villainy for so many British and Irish gangsters in recent years. Throw into that mix a large sprinkling of criminals from other countries across the globe and it’s little wonder that Spain has become a tinderbox of crime, on the verge of exploding at any given moment.
HE PULLED THE matt-black Glock automatic out of the glove compartment of the rental BMW and pointed it straight at me, and then a broad smile came over his horribly scarred face. ‘This is my favourite toy. With this no one fucks with me. I am the king.’ Jimmy’s grin exposed two gold front teeth and his piercing blue eyes glistened in the Marbella sunshine. The most frightening thing about having a gun shoved in your face, even jokingly, is looking at the shooter’s finger on the trigger, and Jimmy was literally stroking it as he held it up in my direction.
But I could hardly complain. Liverpool gangster Jimmy had taken time out to talk me about the activities of his gang and many of his rivals on the Costa del Sol. The British boys had been given a right hammering by the eastern Europeans on the Costa del Crime in recent weeks. Waving that Glock in my face was part of Jimmy’s chilling ‘performance’ as a criminal face. But it’s that very ‘performance’ by so many criminals now based in Spain that is costing hundreds of people their lives every year. As I discovered travelling the length and breadth of this beautiful country, these gangs murder their rivals because it’s part of their business. A well-publicised killing sends out a message to competitors not to overstep the mark. In a sense, it’s highly effective PR. And right in the middle of all this murder and mayhem are a lot of Brits like Jimmy.
It was while making a TV documentary with Jimmy about crime in Spain that I came up with the idea for this book. His cold-blooded attitude and the way he has thrived in the all-year-round heat of southern Spain seemed indicative of the way that criminals have flourished in the country for the past 30 years. It’s as if it’s still the same safe haven it once was. Yet extradition is an everyday occurrence in Spain today, although criminals from all over the world still make it their base because it’s easier to operate with impunity in Spain than anywhere else in Europe. It also happens to be the gateway to Africa and South America, sources for 90 per cent of all the drugs that flood Europe every day.
Jimmy operates on the 20-mile strip of coastline between Fuengirola and Marbella. Drugs and prostitution are his main source of income. Narcotics alone are a massive billion-dollar industry in this area. There is a vicious turf war going on between gangs of criminals from the UK, South America, eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics. It’s a war that began back in the so-called ‘good old days’ of the seventies and early eighties, when British villains fled to Spain to avoid extradition.
Muscular and physically extremely fit, Jimmy had the name of a girlfriend tattooed on his left hand. His dark mop of hair and young-looking face belied his 39 years. And despite waving that gun at me earlier, he seemed to have an easy-going manner. He spoke English and Spanish but talked about murdering people as if it was as normal as eating scrambled eggs for breakfast. If he hadn’t become a criminal, he told me, he’d probably have been an accountant. His own brother was one. Although he did later let slip that another brother back in Toxteth was a hitman, who occasionally flew over to Spain to carry out jobs for his gang.
Jimmy lived in a penthouse apartment close to the centre of Marbella, overlooking the stunning promenade. Even during the current property price meltdown, it had to be worth half a million pounds. Jimmy had at least a hundred grand’s worth of gold jewellery on his fingers and around his neck. He drove rented BMWs, he explained, because he liked to change cars every couple of weeks for ‘security reasons’. Jimmy claimed he’d been stabbed five times, which was why he always carried a gun. He had a four-inch scar running from just below his eye to his chin; it contorted whenever he tried to make a point while talking.
Jimmy had spent, he said, ten years of his life in prison and insisted he’d rather commit suicide than ever go back to jail. He made a point of sliding the tip of his own forefinger across his neck to emphasise the point. Then he lifted up the Polo shirt he wore to show me four scars across his stomach. On one occasion, he explained to me in a very cool fashion, he’d lost four pints of blood and almost had his liver punctured. ‘They wanted me dead,’ he explained. ‘Who?’ I asked calmly. ‘The fuckin’ Russians,’ he spat. ‘I hate them more than other race in the world. They are evil.’ Coming from this man it sounded almost incredulous that he could consider other people to be even more evil than himself.
Jimmy was without doubt one of the coldest people I have ever met. But then his coldness probably helped get him through the riskier aspects of his dangerous ‘profession’. He never seemed fazed by anything and remained totally focused throughout our meeting. But as we walked along the promenade near his home, his eyes darted up to examine every single face going past us. He never seemed to lose concentration. Even as he talked to me he was actively looking in all directions, just in case anyone tried to have a pop at him.
While I was interviewing Jimmy, his Romanian girlfriend Sasha turned up at the penthouse. She seemed flustered and worried about Jimmy and kept fussing around him. I could see he was getting irritated with her. Then suddenly he grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her off to an adjoining room. Less than two minutes later, I heard her scream and then start sobbing. Jimmy reappeared rubbing his hands together almost gleefully. ‘That bitch was out all last night,’ he said. ‘If I find out who she’s fuckin’, I’ll slit his throat.’ Moments later, he returned to his favourite subject – himself.
Jimmy was just one of many criminals I encountered while writing this book but he is undoubtedly a classic example