Officers from Britain's Serious Organised Crime Agency and Spanish police are now increasingly focusing on criminal elements among UK residents

02:11 El NACHO 0 Comments

Officers from Britain's Serious Organised Crime Agency and Spanish police are now increasingly focusing on potentially criminal elements among UK residents abroad. Their efforts are running in tandem with attempts by Greater Manchester Police to round up some of its most wanted individuals. Recently, the Mancunian suspected of funding one of Britain's largest gun smuggling operations was caught after 11 years on the run, most of them believed to have been in Spain. Michael Sammon, 47, was allegedly involved in a plot in which 274 weapons were imported into Britain from Europe. Two weeks ago Irishman Timothy O'Toole was jailed in Spain for trying to smuggle cocaine worth £100m into Europe on board a yacht from South America. He had extensive links with the Manchester underworld with police monitoring his dealings in Marbella.However, others are still to be caught. In particular, detectives are still hunting Raymond Nevitt from Manchester, who funded his playboy lifestyle and obsession with fast cars following a £3.25m fraud scam. The 43-year-old is believed to be in Puerto Banus or Marbella and has been found guilty in his absence of fraudulent trading.One of Britain's most wanted men will be extradited to the UK this week after being arrested in Benidorm, southern Spain. Bobby Spiers will be interviewed by Manchester police in connection with a bungled underworld hit in a Salford pub that left two men dead.The seizure of Spiers is a notable triumph for British police, ending a two-year manhunt for the Mancunian boss of a Salford private security firm who allegedly had links to some of the city's most notorious armed gangs. In recent weeks, officers had received intelligence concerning Spiers's new life on the Costa del Sol. Greater Manchester Police believe the 42-year-old from Prestwich was involved in orchestrating an assassination attempt on Salford criminal David Totton in 2006. After a row over nightclub entry between the two, its is alleged that Spiers contacted Ian McLeod - the chief of Moss Side's Doddington gang - and ordered a £10,000 hit on Totton while he was drinking in the Brass Handles pub in Salford. McLeod, in turn, hired two young Doddington hitmen to carry out the attack while drinkers watched a televised Manchester United match. Spiers was at Old Trafford watching the game, the perfect alibi. His company secretary, convicted gun-runner Constance Howarth, known locally as the Black Widow, had agreed to sit in the pub and guide the gunmen to their target by sending text messages to the pair. One shot Totton, 29, six times in the face and chest but he miraculously survived. However, the weapon belonging to his accomplice jammed and amid the ensuing commotion, drinkers overpowered the two would-be assassins and shot them with their own weapons. Both managed to escape but were caught by the pub's clientele and attacked as they lay dying from their gunshot wounds on a nearby grass banking.Meanwhile, Howarth applied fresh lipstick in the toilets and left. No one came forward to identify those who shot the two young gang members and by the time police arrived CCTV footage from inside the pub had been wiped clean.
Both Howarth and McLeod were later jailed for life for their part in the conspiracy, with the prosecution case alleging that Spiers 'was instrumental in the planned execution'. By that time, however, he was enjoying anonymity among the 375,000-strong British expat community around Malaga.