Costa Confidential: Costa del Sol

Showing posts with label Costa del Sol. Show all posts

James “Pancake” Taylor was picked up by police trying to stop a violent
drugs war that has broken out on the Costa del Sol. Liverpool gangster was today behind bars in Spain after being arrested for attempted murder.James “Pancake” Taylor was picked up by police trying to stop a violent drugs war that has broken out on the Costa del Sol.The 29-year-old is also being investigated over claims he is the ringleader of a gang which has brought terror to the sunshine streets.
A leaked report to a Spanish judge over a spate of shootings says the gang is a “worldwide organisation that is dedicated mainly to drug trafficking, targeted assassinations and has a hierarchical structure among the members, almost all of whom originate in Liverpool and Manchester”.Taylor was arrested over the shooting of a Brit after a nightclub brawl last August.

Body of San Pedro de Alcántara businessman, Fernando Moreno, was found bound and gagged close to the Istán road .Nine who were close to the 76 year old Marbella businessman, Fernando Moreno Espada, have been brought in for questioning by the police as they investigate his death during an express kidnapping attempt last week.
Searches have been carried out in several homes in Urbanisation La Campana, San Pedro Marbella, Torremolinos and Málaga, and more arrests have not been ruled out.
It’s understood that of the nine detained yesterday now only two remain in custody. Some of those detained are reported to be foreigners, but their nationality has not been revealed. Reporting restrictions remain in force in the case.Diario Sur reports this morning that one of held is an ex employee of the victim.

Inspectors working for Hacienda tax authorities in Spain appear to have unearthed around €16m of unregistered income from town planning licences issued between 2003 and 2004 by Estepona Town Hall, Costa del Sol, indicating potential VAT fraud.
The inspectors, who claim to have had their investigation hindered by the Town Hall, have now submitted the documentary evidence to the Prosecutors’ Office. Manuel Reina, a former politician, is responsible for the accounts, and is currently being detained in connection with the Astapa court case.

Hundreds of thousands of families are abandoning the Costa del Sol and other traditional holiday destinations for eastern Europe and north Africa to escape the punitive euro exchange rate. With state schools breaking up, many families will spend this weekend packing their bags to go to Turkey, Croatia, Bulgaria, Tunisia and Egypt rather than Greece, Spain or France. Most eurozone countries have never represented such poor value for British travel makers, with £1 buying just €1.26. A year ago holidaymakers' money went 20 per cent further, with the exchange rate at €1.49. Those countries outside of the eurozone – but only slightly further in terms of flying time – such as in eastern Europe and north Africa have witnessed a surge in bookings, according to travel companies. Lastminute.com, the travel website, said bookings to Turkey are up more than 14 per cent, bookings to Tunisia have shot up by 95 per cent and the number of people taking holidays to Croatia has soared by 150 per cent compared with last year. Meanwhile, bookings to Italy are down eight per cent, Spain is down four per cent, Greece is down eight per cent and France has dipped by two per cent. These figures are backed up by CheapFlights, which specialises in finding air plane tickets for independent travellers.
While bookings to Barcelona have fallen by 16 per cent, tickets being bought to Dalaman, on the southwest coast of Turkey, have increased by 9 per cent.
The Co-Operative Travel Company describes the new trend as a "seismic shift".
Phil Davies, the editor of TravelMole, the travel industry website, said: "Given people are counting the pennies, the strong euro is having a significant impact on where people are going.
"Why go to Spain or France, if it will cost you so much more when you get there?"
A bottle of beer in Turkey will set you back just £1.11 – little more than a third of the price of the same bottle in France, where it costs £2.96, according to the Post Office. Prices in Greece are 22 per cent more expensive than its neighbour Turkey when it comes to a basket of popular goods such as beer, sun cream and insect repellent, due to the strong euro and relatively weak Turkish Lira.
The Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA) pointed out that while Spain was "having a poor year" official figures show that it remains clearly the number one destination with more than 12 million Britons visiting the country every year. Greece welcomes 2.2 million Britons – a million more than Turkey.
Tunisia, despite its new found popularity, attracted just 270,000 British holidaymakers in 2006, the most recent year for which figures are available from the Office of National Statistics.
However, the popularity of non-eurozone countries is no short-term blip, experts said. ABTA estimates that 1.32 million people will fly out of Britain this weekend from just the main airports.
By its calculations, bookings for Egypt are up 28 per cent and Turkey are up 20 per cent. Bob Atkinson at TravelSupermarket, the price comparison website, said: "There is a clear trend towards visiting more exotic locations, and doing something a bit more interesting or active on holiday.
"After all a lot of people have done Spain to death. Why not visit Tunisia, Egypt or Croatia – once you are there the holiday will be significantly cheaper."
Families that have not booked a holiday in the hope of catching a last minute deal to these cheaper destinations are set to be frustrated, however.
Holiday companies, anticipating the economic slowdown, have cut back capacity . This factor, combined with the fact that very few people have actually cut back on their holidays means that prices for last minute deals are high.
However, Lastminute.com has a seven nights stay a the El Mouradi Gammarth – a five start hotel in Tunisia's Gammarth resort –for just £199 per person.
The cheapest deal for a week long trip to Croatia will set you back £414 per person, according to the travel website.

It would be hard to find a better bolt hole than the Casa Flores, a luxury villa hidden in dense forest on a mountain above San Pedro de Alcantara, southern Spain.
Casa Flores is part of a complex called El Madronal. Unlike the high-density “urbanisations” that now disfigure the entire Mediterranean coast of Spain, El Madronal offers luxury, privacy and, above all, security. A central control room within the huge complex monitors all movement 24 hours a day via a bank of CCTV screens. The steep terrain makes El Madronal inaccessible other than through one
of six electronic gates, where visitors must state their business. Their names, addresses and car registration numbers are logged in the control room. A guard then contacts the property being visited and if the owner agrees, the iron gates roll open. (I was only able to gain access by posing as a potential buyer; Sotheby’s International Realty kindly escorted me in to view a villa currently on the market for a trifling E4m.) Another set of electronic gates protects every property, each of which has its own alarm system.
None of this was enough for the man who rented Casa Flores for E7,000 a month two years ago. Before he moved in with his then girlfriend, he spent £35,000 on additional security precautions that made Casa Flores virtually impregnable. But after the latest episode in his inglorious career, Sir Mark Thatcher probably has more to worry about than most. Famous for getting lost during the Paris-Dakar motor rally and making his mother cry in public, notorious for shamelessly exploiting her name to further dodgy business ventures, renowned for his rudeness, arrogance and pomposity, and no stranger to controversy, none of his previous dubious escapades can compare with his reckless involvement in an ill-fated plot to oust the offal-loving president of Equatorial Guinea. While publicly denying any significant role, in January 2005 Sir Mark pleaded guilty in South Africa, after a plea bargain, to “unwittingly” abetting the coup. He was fined 3m rand (£266,000), given a suspended four-year jail term, and obliged to leave South Africa, his home for a decade. As part of the deal, he is required to co-operate with the ongoing investigation, a rider that may yet come to haunt him. Many observers concluded that he got away lightly – the youth wing of South Africa’s ruling African National Congress called the deal “an abomination and miscarriage of justice” – but he is not yet out of the woods. It seems President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, who is not a man to cross, is determined that the son of our former prime minister should stand trial in Equatorial Guinea alongside his Old Etonian friend Simon Mann, the alleged leader of the plot who is currently languishing in Equatorial Guinea’s infamous Black Beach prison. Although there are no extradition treaties between Equatorial Guinea and the EU, Obiang has noted that the US no longer troubles with the tedious details of legal process and moves prisoners around the world by “extraordinary rendition”. He sees no reason why he should not follow suit. Thus it is that rumours abound of kidnap squads – a Russian gang has been mentioned – being recruited to snatch Sir Mark, spirit him away and produce him in an Equatorial Guinea courthouse, where his chances of a fair trial would be rather less than even and he could expect a sentence in excess of 30 years. The unfortunate Mann, removed with what he called “gratuitous violence” from a prison in Zimbabwe to Malabo, the capital of Equatorial Guinea, earlier this year, faces the same fate. Jose Olo Obono, the country’s attorney-general, has promised that Sir Mark will be pursued “wherever he goes”. If the South African authorities require Sir Mark to return to answer further questions – and he is legally obligated to do so – a kidnap operation would be much simpler. Alternatively, Obiang could seek rougher justice by simply putting a bounty on Sir Mark’s head and wait for someone to claim it. Thatcher’s life began to fall apart after his conviction in 2005. His American wife, Diane, returned to the US with the children, and in September the couple announced their intention to divorce. She was furious with her husband about the Equatorial Guinea adventure, and she was fed up with his infidelities, having caught him cheating twice. Diane has always avoided the limelight and is thus mistakenly viewed as a somewhat insipid member of the high-profile family she married into. When introduced to Mrs Thatcher at Chequers in 1984, she was surprised by the formal way Mark addressed his mother. “Prime Minister,” he said, “this is Diane Burgdorf.” The formality endured: Diane was never encouraged to call her mother-in-law anything other than Mrs Thatcher or Lady Thatcher. In the autumn of 1989, shortly after the birth of their first child, they took a 10-day break at the Eden Roc hotel in Antibes, where they met the three vivacious daughters of the millionaire property developer Terence Clemence. While they were enjoying themselves, the Thatchers, Sarah-Jane Clemence recalled, behaved like “Mr and Mrs Glum”. Diane returned to Dallas while Mark flew to Paris, where he had business to attend to. Her suspicions were raised when she looked at his American Express statement and noticed that huge charges from the Ritz had been billed to his account, along with a second air ticket from the Riviera. By then Mark was in London. Diane hired a private detective and had him followed, and she was soon in possession of a photo of her husband with a woman he was spending all his time with: Sarah-Jane Clemence. When Mark got back to Dallas she confronted him with the evidence. He admitted it immediately, pleaded for her forgiveness, and promised never to see Sarah-Jane again. But Diane was not finished. The private detective had provided her with the phone number of her husband’s lover. Diane called her and asked for a meeting. Amazingly, the other woman agreed. They met in Sarah-Jane’s flat in London for what Diane describes as a “friendly chat”, although one can imagine the atmosphere was somewhat frosty. “I wanted to appeal to her sense of what was right and thought I’d gotten through to her,” Diane says. The Thatchers did their best to patch up their relationship with marriage counselling, but a few years later Mark returned from a health farm in California acting strangely, very taciturn, moody and critical of everything. Diane began to worry that he was having another affair. She said she prayed for help: “God, if you want me to know something, please let me find it out.” She would help God along a little. When Mark made a lame excuse for another business trip to California she waited until he was asleep then went into his dressing room and found his travel itinerary, flight number and hotel reservation. Next morning, she booked herself on an earlier flight.
When Thatcher walked into the lobby of a Santa Monica hotel with his arm around a pretty American air-force pilot, his wife was sitting on a sofa waiting for him. He looked, she said, “as if he had seen a ghost”. What she described as “a little confrontation” followed. He tried to introduce the woman as a business associate but Diane snorted “I’m not stupid”, and she beat a hasty retreat. After this Diane said she wanted a divorce. Thatcher seemed resigned to the fact, but over the next few weeks and after another round of marriage counselling, they effected some kind of reconciliation for the sake of their children. Diane agonised at length about whether she should go with Mark to South Africa and she was not unhappy that she did so, particularly when she became a member of a women’s bible-study group. It was his irresponsible foolhardiness getting involved with the Equatorial Guinea coup and putting his family at risk that finally convinced her to end the marriage. “I think his choice not to pull out when he became suspicious showed his priorities,” she said. “He was incredibly selfish, putting his own needs for self-fulfilment, greed and lust for power before his family.” Diane’s decision to return to Dallas with the children effectively cut them off from their father. With a criminal conviction, there was no possibility of his obtaining a visa to enter the US. Amanda, then 12, took it badly and wrote an anguished letter to President Bush: “You know how you feel about your daughters? I want my Daddy back in America.” She received no reply.
During the spring and summer of 2005 they got together for two family holidays in the Turks and Caicos and the British Virgin Islands. Diane briefly considered a reconciliation, but then she discovered Mark was again seeing Sarah-Jane, who in the interim had become Lady Francis Russell, having married in 1996. It was the final straw and she filed for divorce
It is ironic that he should have ended up, temporarily at least, on the Costa del Sol, since it is the traditional haunt of Englishmen with criminal records. You can usually find one or two in Sinatra Bar in Puerto Banus. Deeply tanned, heavily tattooed and festooned with bling, they sit staring at the moored superyachts with rheumy eyes, perhaps dreaming of their favourite pub in south London, or a dish of jellied eels. Understandably, Sir Mark does not socialise much with the expatriate criminal fraternity and is never seen in the fleshpots of Puerto Banus or Marbella, usually only leaving his forest fastness for a round of golf or business meetings in Gibraltar. “Mark Thatcher keeps a very low profile around here,” says David Eade, a stringer for the Costa del Sol News. “Interest in his comings and goings is about zero.” Nobody seems to know how he passes the time, where he goes, or who he meets. His reputation as a businessman can hardly have been enhanced by his arrest and conviction in South Africa, yet he apparently still travels to Russia and Japan in pursuit of “oil deals”. If asked about his business he likes to say he “gambles on oil tankers”. Interest in his comings and goings is much greater in Equatorial Guinea where, earlier this year, a warrant was issued for his arrest. A mosquito-infested jungle hellhole tucked into the armpit of Africa, Equatorial Guinea has one of the worst human-rights records on the continent. A predecessor of Obiang, who seized power in a bloody coup in 1979, set a new standard in brutality by executing 150 opponents in a sports stadium to the broadcast strains of Mary Hopkin’s Those Were the Days.In truth, nobody gave a damn about the former Spanish colony until oil was discovered there in 1996. Sewage ran through the streets of Malabo, there was little drinking water, and no regular electricity supply. Oil brought prosperity, but only to the ruling elite: Obiang and his family misappropriate much of the country’s £370m annual oil revenue, while the majority of the country’s 500,000 wretched inhabitants still languish in poverty on less than 50p a day. In 2000, Thatcher attempted to do business with Equatorial Guinea through a company called Cogito, which he had set up to provide security advice and intelligence to multi-national companies in Africa. Cogito offered Obiang a £134,000 contract to gather intelligence on his opponents and draw up threat assessments. Thatcher hoped it would lead to securing valuable oil concessions, but in the end Obiang rejected the offer. The source of both Thatcher’s so-called business expertise and his fortune (estimated in the 2006 Sunday Times Rich List at £64m) is a mystery. He failed to shine academically at Harrow, where his nickname was “Thickie Mork”, and gave up a career in accountancy after failing his exams three times. Only when his mother became prime minister in 1979 did his business career take off: five months after Mrs Thatcher moved into Downing Street, Mark set up his own “international consultancy” company, Monteagle Marketing, and found his services much in demand, trading on his mother’s name and promoting everything from sportswear to whisky. There were a few hiccups, particularly when Mummy was banging the drum and exhorting everyone to “buy British” while her son was discussing a lucrative sponsorship deal with a Japanese textile firm. The Financial Times memorably described him as a “sort of Harrovian Arthur Daley with a famous mum”. It was not long before Mark was viewed as a serious liability in Downing Street, although no one dared raise the subject with his mother. Mrs Thatcher had a blind spot about her son. When Bernard Ingham, Mrs Thatcher’s plain-speaking press secretary, was asked how Mark could best help in an upcoming re-election campaign, he famously replied: “Leave the country.” In 1981 there was the threat of a full-blown scandal when it was alleged that he received £1m commission for the construction of a university in Oman, a contract negotiated by his mother. The affair led to difficult questions being asked in the Commons. Three years later he was said to have received a £12m kickback on the £40 billion Al-Yamamah arms deal with Saudi Arabia, again pushed through by his mother. Complaining he was being victimised by the media and that he was “not appreciated” (a fundamental truth, if ever there was one), Thatcher decamped to the US, where he met Diane Burgdorf, the daughter of a Texas millionaire car dealer, whom he would marry in 1987. Meanwhile, a confidential briefing prepared in March 1984 for George Shultz, then the US secretary of state, offered a withering view of Mark Thatcher, businessman: “Most of his business dealings were predicated on the belief that he had only one asset – with a limited life span – his link to the British prime minister.” Controversy continued to dog his various business activities. The IRS investigated him for alleged tax evasion, and a racketeering case was settled out of court. In 1995 he moved with his family to South Africa and bought a large house on Dawn Avenue in Constantia, the best part of Cape Town, where Elton John, Earl Spencer and Michael Douglas all owned property. Before moving in, paranoid about his personal safety, he had had bulletproof curtains fitted as part of the state-of-the-art security equipment in every room. Three years later he was in the news again when a company he owned was accused of running a loan-shark operation, offering unofficial loans to police officers, military personnel and civil servants and then charging punitive interest rates when they defaulted. Thatcher, of course, insisted he’d done no wrong. One of his neighbours in Constantia was Mann, a former SAS officer and adventurer who had made a fortune providing mercenaries to protect oil installations against rebels in Angola’s civil war, crushing an uprising in Papua New Guinea and shipping arms to Sierra Leone in flagrant contravention of a UN embargo. In the summer of 2003, Mann met Severo Moto, opposition leader of Equatorial Guinea, who was living in exile in Madrid. At the end of the meeting, Mann agreed to recruit a mercenary force to overthrow Obiang. His fee was to be £10m plus a share in future oil revenues and 30% of all assets recovered from the Obiang family. Back in South Africa, Mann involved two friends in the plot: Crause Steyl, a pilot who had worked for him on previous operations, and Nick du Toit, a former officer in South African special forces. Steyl was to organise all the air transport; du Toit was to help with recruiting, then set up logistical support in Equatorial Guinea. In November, Mann and Thatcher had several meetings in London to discuss “transport ventures” in west Africa. Sir Mark would insist that he was never told about the coup, although he admitted agreeing to finance the chartering of an air-ambulance helicopter for one of Mann’s “ventures” and later suspected that it might be used for “mercenary activities”. He could have pulled out at that moment, but did not. In December, the newly widowed Lady Thatcher flew to Cape Town to spend Christmas with her son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren, Michael, then aged 14, and Amanda, 10. Steyl and Mann were among the guests at Sir Mark’s traditional pre-Christmas drinks party around the swimming pool in the garden on December 22.
On January 12, 2004, Mann wrote a memorandum outlining the potential risks in the operation that appeared to directly implicate his friend. “If MT’s involvement is known,” he noted, “the rest of us and project is likely to be screwed – as a side-issue to people screwing him… Ensure doesn’t happen.” Four days later, Sir Mark signed an agreement with Steyl committing him to a maximum investment of $500,000 in an air-ambulance company. Despite Mann’s plea for secrecy, du Toit’s recruiting activities inevitably attracted the attention of the South African intelligence service, which alerted the governments of Britain, Spain and the US. In backstreet bars where soldiers for hire gathered, all the talk was of the upcoming action in Equatorial Guinea. Mann himself realised that the operation might have been compromised, but made the fatal mistake of interpreting diplomatic silence as tacit approval of his plans. Certainly no tears would have been shed had Obiang’s corrupt regime been toppled: apart from stealing the country blind, he maintained power through terror. Severo Moto told Mann that if he ever returned to Equatorial Guinea while Obiang was still in power, he would be tortured and murdered and Obiang would eat his testicles. Telephone records later obtained by a private detective hired by Henry Page, a Paris-based lawyer representing the government of Equatorial Guinea, showed that Mann and Sir Mark spoke very often in the days immediately before the coup. “Of course we don’t know what was said,” Page explained, “only that Mark Thatcher’s number appears on the record of Simon Mann’s calls with increasing frequency.” On the evening of Sunday, March 7, a US-registered Boeing 727 carrying 64 mercenaries, mainly former members of the South African special forces, landed at Harare airport, where they were due to collect Mann and an armoury of weapons before flying to Equatorial Guinea. The Zimbabwe intelligence service was waiting for them. They were all arrested, along with Mann. In Malabo, du Toit and 13 other men were also arrested and accused of plotting a coup. Steyl, waiting in Mali for word that the coup was a success before flying into Equatorial Guinea with Severo Moto, escaped arrest. Held in solitary confinement in the hellish Chikurubi maximum-security prison in Zimbabwe, Mann wrote desperate letters to his wife, his lawyer and friends asking them to contact the “investors” in the operation to raise more money: “What we need is maximum effort – whatever it takes – now… It may be that getting us out comes down to a large splodge of wonga.” Among the investors he suggested approaching was “Scratcher” – his nickname for his friend Mark Thatcher. Dries Coetzee, a private detective hired by Mann’s lawyer, was given the thankless task of collecting the “wonga”. It was not easy. He telephoned Mark Thatcher at his home in Cape Town, explained he had a mandate from Mann to raise funds, and demanded $300,000. Sir Mark was in his study watching a grand prix when he took the call. “Look, Mr Coetzee,” he said, “I tend not to give money to people I’ve never met, so why don’t you just f*** off.” In March, Crause Steyl quietly returned to his home in South Africa, expecting to be arrested. Instead, the Directorate of Special Operations, an elite crime squad known as “the Scorpions”, offered him a deal: immunity in return for complete co-operation. Steyl was sickened by the way his friends Mann and du Toit had been left high and dry and decided to tell all. Significantly, he was convinced that Thatcher was in on the plot from the beginning. In fact Thatcher was already talking to the South African intelligence service, possibly because they threatened to extradite him to Equatorial Guinea if he did not co-operate. At 7am on August 25, 2004, the Scorpions arrived at his Constantia mansion with a search warrant. Six hours later, he was driven away in a police vehicle and appeared in court that afternoon charged with contravening the Foreign Military Assistance Act, which bans South African residents from taking part in any foreign military activity. He was released on bail of £167,000, paid by his mother, and warned not to leave the Cape Town area.
The sensational arrest of the son of Lady Thatcher made headlines around the world. Sir Mark continued to protest his innocence, issuing a statement through his friend and unofficial spokesman, Lord Bell: “I have no involvement in any alleged coup in Equatorial Guinea and I reject totally all suggestions to the contrary.” But as damning details emerged, more and more people concluded he was lying to save his skin. Sir Bernard Ingham, whose admiration for Lady Thatcher remains undimmed, told me he thought it was “very difficult to believe” her son did not know what was going on. “He’s not the brightest spark but by God he knows how to make money. The plain fact is, he’s a barrow boy.” “Mark could not resist being involved,” said Mark Hollingsworth, co-author of Thatcher’s Fortunes: The Life and Times of Mark Thatcher. “He attended planning meetings at Simon Mann’s house, knew exactly what was going on and was looking for a slice of the action. The notion that he would invest $500,000 and not know what it was used for is risible. He hero-worshipped Mann and loved the secret world of soldiers of fortune, spies and high-risk shady business deals in oil-trading and gunrunning.”
Earlier this year, in an interview for Channel 4 conducted in Black Beach prison, Mann, shackled at hands and feet, confirmed Thatcher was “part of the team”. He also named Ely Calil, a rich businessman of Lebanese-Nigerian origin and a friend of Moto, as the principal financial backer. There had been rumours that the disgraced Tory peer Lord Archer was involved, but Mann denied it. Both Thatcher and Calil quickly issued statements suggesting that Mann’s plight had prompted him to make wild accusations. “Simon Mann is an old friend of mine for whom I have the utmost sympathy throughout this whole ghastly process,” said Thatcher. Calil’s statement read: “I confirm that I had no involvement in, or responsibility for, the alleged coup.” I asked Calil’s lawyer, Imran Khan, if his client would agree to be interviewed. Khan said he would put forward my request and get back to me either way. I heard nothing more. After his ignominious departure from Cape Town, typically protesting that his prosecution was politically inspired and that President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa had never liked his mother, Thatcher was adrift. He stayed with his mother at her house in Chester Square, Belgravia, before looking for a place to live. It was not easy. Monaco, famously described by Somerset Maugham as a “sunny place for shady people”, was his first choice, but he was told his temporary residency card would not be renewed. No explanation was given, but a spokesman for Prince Albert pointed out that the prince intended “morality, honesty and ethics” to be at the centre of life in the principality. France and Switzerland also failed to extend a warm welcome, which is how Thatcher ended up on the Costa del Sol, renting Casa Flores. Lady Francis Russell, newly separated from her husband, moved in with him in May 2006. Both obtained divorces during 2007 and in March this year they married, quietly, in Gibraltar, in a ceremony attended by only three friends. Notably absent was Thatcher’s twin sister, Carol.
Carol and Mark Thatcher actively dislike each other. No twins could be more different: Carol is jolly, down to earth and popular; her brother is rude, imperious and self-important. They have not spoken for years. When I asked her if she would be interviewed for this feature, her reply was nothing if not forthright: “Honestly, I really haven’t got anything to say about Mark. We have lived in different countries for decades.” In fact, finding anyone with a kind word about Mark Thatcher is not easy. His good friend Lord Archer was too busy writing his next novel and could not be disturbed, but his other good friend, Jonathan Aitken (who coincidentally dated Carol years ago), finally stepped forward. “Mark has never been arrogant or pompous in my company. That said, I have noticed that he can be a surprisingly shy person, which sometimes manifests itself in the form of being a little brusque. In his commercial activities while his mother was prime minister he was no saint, but he was far less of a sinner than his journalistic detractors would like to believe.” Aitken says Thatcher was a loyal and generous friend after he was jailed for perjury and perverting the course of justice in 1999. When he was released after serving seven months, Thatcher took him out to lunch and asked what he could do to help, offering him money, an all-expenses-paid holiday in Cape Town, anything he wanted. Aitken was genuinely touched.
Thatcher’s future is uncertain. He recently applied for tax-residency status in Gibraltar, prompting speculation that he intended to make his home on the Rock, but his application is likely to have been turned down. Adding to his problems, the owner of Casa Flores, a fellow Old Harrovian by the name of Stephen Humberstone, would very much like to evict him. Thatcher has an almost unique ability to rub people up the wrong way, which he has certainly done with Humberstone. “Basically, he just pisses me off. He is always late with the rent. Under Spanish law I have to wait three months before I can take him to court and he presumably knows that and pays up after two months. We were in the same house at school – I can’t believe he is treating me in such a shabby manner.
“He thinks a lot of himself. I think he likes the house because it is very secluded and a seven-minute drive from the main gate. Nobody would ever find him down there. He told me once he would like to buy it, but there is no way I would ever sell it to someone like him.

Costa del Sol villas and quality apartments in good locations have dropped by as much as £20,000 to £80,000. Some high-end properties costing over £1m have lost £200,000 off their initial valuations in the past few months. Sellers are also gravitating towards auction houses, where properties can achieve a fast sale at knock-down prices. Inez Rix of Direct Auctions says she has seen a huge increase in business from owners desperately trying to offload property. "Things are getting worse and people are dropping prices drastically where they can."On Direct Auction's website, properties are being listed as much as 60 per cent below their original valuations. Banks have been incredibly slow to alter their valuation criteria and take account of the crash, but nonetheless, their figures show the kinds of reductions that are now available. A one two-bedroom apartment near Fuengirola, for example, was recently valued at £148,000 and has dropped to £84,000 – that's £64,000 less. Another two-bed property in the same location is listed at £44,000 less than its valuation. One lovely villa in Marbella valued on paper at £570,000 is now on the market at £492,000, a drop of nearly £80,000.As property prices dip, Rix has seen an increase in the number of owners falling into negative equity, and the banks are sitting on a growing cache of repossessions.

One would expect the institutions to sell them off at rock-bottom prices but this is not happening, because there is no precedent of mass repossessions in Spain. "Many people realise they aren't going to sell their homes in a month of Sundays and are just walking away," says Rix. "The banks are being slow to sell properties to cover their costs but we expect more properties to come on to the market over the next two years." Which means anyone prepared to play a waiting game could bag a real bargain. Most properties showing big reductions are new-builds, bought by investors hoping to sell before completion and in advance of the mortgage kicking in, a practice known as flipping. However, there are also rural properties and exclusive estates being sold at rock-bottom prices by owners who have simply been caught out by the upheaval.
Derek Blaney stopped selling off-plan several years ago when he saw the market becoming overheated and says more responsible agents are glad that the recent scandals and market forces have made the industry more transparent. "Things had to be cleaned up," he says. "Property was being seen as a sheer commodity, people were buying through greed and with no emotional attachment."
Who can blame buyers when they were being wooed with promises of huge returns that now seem impossible? With the credit crisis biting deep, there may be further room for prices in Spain to fall. For those who bought in Spain a year or two ago, none of this will come as any consolation. But for those looking to buy a place in the sun, it's worth following the selling prices of the nicer properties, and steering well clear of vast developments. At some stage, the outlook will change. It may not boom, but it must at some stage level off. And buyers who get the timing right could be on to a good deal indeed.

Alfredo Marijuán and Carlos Farré have been detained in custody and Isaac Pacheco Suárez and Eusebio Vázquez Fernández were released on bail.Four inspectors from an elite unit that combats organised crime in Malaga have been charged with bribery, embezzlement, dereliction of duty, ownership of illegal arms, and revealing confidential information. Forty officers have been questioned in connection with the case, which relates to alleged payments received by Inspector Marijuán from Russian nationals for reports on police surveillance operations.The officer was also alleged to have delivered an envelope containing details about the girlfriend of a Russian who was arrested for cocaine smuggling in the US. The Costa del Sol has become the base for a dangerous breed of gang, from the UK, Russia, Colombia and eastern Europe. The Russian mafia are known to have a major presence on the Costa del Sol, exploiting lax property laws and lack of police resources to launder millions from arms dealing, drug dealing and prostitution. A Spanish interior ministry report said nearly a third of organised crime in Spain is based in the area, with 102 known gangs. Three years ago, Spain launched a major crackdown there, forming specialised units to combat the problem.

The shocked husband of a Plymouth woman who collapsed and died unexpectedly during a Spanish diving holiday has paid tribute to his 'lovely' wife.
Irene Cunningham, aged 53, of Greenbank, died in a hospital in the Costa del Sol on Saturday, March 1, after suffering a massive heart attack during a waterfront walk the previous day. Her devastated husband Pete Cunningham said it was 'an honour' to have been married to Irene. Pete, aged 51, said: 'It's such a shock to us all, she went so suddenly.'

Spanish police believe Amy Fitzpatrick may have run away from home.

They said yesterday that they are becoming increasingly convinced that the 15-year-old disappeared voluntarily and was not abducted after leaving a friend's house, where she had been babysittting on New Year's Day.
Civil Guard officers leading the search for Amy are still hunting for a white Ford Fiesta belonging to Ritchie O'Shea, a friend of the teenager's family, who was arrested last week after police questioning. Last night, they released the English numberplate of the car in the hope it will jog the memory of a member of the public.
The number plate is C955 SLK. Detectives believe finding it could be crucial to their investigation.
Amy is reported to have driven the car on several occasions after opening it with a screwdriver.
Hilario Lopez Luna, government delegate for the Malaga province where Amy's family lives, said: "All lines of investigation are open; no hypothesis has been ruled out."
But he added: "One very important line of investigation is that she left voluntaril
Investigators have yet to come up with any clues to her whereabouts more than three weeks after she vanished near her Costa del Sol home on New Year's Day.

Audrey Fitzpatrick says she feels ‘impotent,’ with the lack of any positive information, despite the Civil Guard having done everything they can by searching for her daughter, and interviewing friends and family. Amy’s mother said the family will hand out posters and leaflets of the teenager across Spain, ‘from Alicante to Gibraltar,’ in the hope of any information which could help bring the 15 year old home. They said they are aware that interest in Amy’s case could fade as time goes on, particularly after the disappearance of five year old Mari Luz, who vanished from Huelva on 13th January.

the EFE news agency has quoted sources close to the investigation saying that the possibility that she may have left of her own free will is becoming stronger. They noted in their report on Wednesday a comment from Hilario López Luna, the government delegate for Málaga province, that one ‘very important line of investigation’ is that she left voluntarily.Audrey, said in a statement released on Tuesday that the family is becoming more and more worried as time goes on, as they are convinced that Amy would have been in contact by now to let them know she was safe.
The latest news on the investigation is that the Garda are investigating possible sightings in Ireland, and the Civil Guard on the Costa del Sol are looking for a white car belonging to a family friend which went missing after Amy disappeared, on the chance that she might have taken it.

Police hope ex-pats or holidaymakers might recognise the wanted men in bars, golf clubs or supermarkets.
Some of the runaways are thought to be involved in more criminality in Spain, where drug trafficking, particularly cannabis, is huge business.
The suspects being hunted are:

Three East Midlands men have been named among 10 suspected criminals who police claim are on the run in the "Costa del Crime" region of Spain.
Jason Richard Gulliford, 36, from Lincoln, is wanted by Nottinghamshire Police in connection with the stabbing of another man over a drugs debt in April 2003.
Daniel Paul Johnston, 27, from Burton on Trent, is wanted in connection with the attempted robbery of an off-licence. He was allegedly armed with a knife.
John Barton, 52, from Mansfield, was sentenced in his absence to 20 years' imprisonment in 2003. He was convicted for his role in a plot to import large quantities of heroin into the UK between 1999 and 2000.
Police want the public to help them trace them and seven other fugitives thought to be living in the Costa del Sol region of southern Spain.

James Tomkins, wanted for a gangland murder in East London.
John Barton, jailed in his absence for 20 years for heroin smuggling.
Noel Cunningham, suspected of armed robbery, GBH and gun offences in London.
Jason Gulliford, alleged to have stabbed a rival with a screwdriver in a row over drugs.
Scott Coleman, jumped bail on heroin supply charges.
Daniel Johnston, wanted for robberies in Derbyshire.
Keith Burke, suspected of a violent assault in a Doncaster bar.
David Andrews, allegedly smuggled cocaine though Heathrow using corrupt airport staff.
Allan Foster, said to have shot a man dead in a gangland hit in South Shields.
John Barker, wanted for cocaine and amphetamine smuggling.

Chief Inspector Alfredo Marijuan, of Malaga police, said: "British people like to help the police.
"But it's difficult to spot these men because they change their identity and they often have support and protection from their friends. They rarely move outside their own group."

But it has worked in the past. When Crimestoppers published the pictures of the first 10 suspects half of them were arrested within a year

The police investigation into the disappearance of Amy Fitzpatrick in Mijas, Málaga, found a new lead Thursday when a neighbour testified that his car, which he often lent to the girl, had gone missing on 1 January.
The 35-year-old British man told the Civil Guard that he had not reported his car missing until now because he feared being arrested over two old traffic violations. But an interrogation has yielded "several contradictions," police sources said yesterday.
Amy Fitzpatrick, 15, used to take refuge in the neighbour's home when she had arguments with her family, her best friend Ashley Rubio told investigators. The man is friends with the missing girl's stepfather.
The girl disappeared on 1 January after visiting her friend Ashley, who lives close by in a gated community in this resort town on Costa del Sol.

La Opinion de Málaga reports that two main line of investigations are being followed in the case. Firstly that she left the area with someone she knew, or secondly, she is being held somewhere against her will.The Civil Guard is investigating what they describe a passion motive in the case of the disappearance of the missing 15 year old Irish girl, Amy Fitzpatrick, who vanished from Calahonda in Mijas Costa on the evening of New Year’s Day. This idea has apparently gained support following interviews of many of Amy’s friends carried out by the Guardia Civil.
Meanwhile a 34 year old British friend of the Fitzpatrick family has been arrested. Named in reports only by the initials R.B.O., he was being searched for in connection with two traffic offences which have no link to Amy’s disappearance. He spent last night in the prison in Alhaurín de la Torre after being arrested when he was called in for questioning as a friend of the family.

Orlando Sabogal, arrested and detained in Madrid . Known as El Socio, Sabogal is considered the right-hand man of Luis Hernando Gómez Bustamante – the chief of the Norte del Valle cartel, which moves 40 per cent of the cocaine consumed globally.
El Socio was in charge of collecting the money, which had been laundered through various Real Estate companies.
However, police are unsure through which companies the cartel channelled their illicit gains.
“Tracing money that has already passed through various companies and even tax havens back to drugs is an impossible task,” a police spokesman said.
Recent reports suggest Spain is in the middle of a cocaine epidemic, with the country having the greatest percentage of users in the world.
According to a United Nations study, 3 per cent of Spaniards between 15 and 64 years of age admitted to having taken cocaine within the past year.
Last year, 50,000 kilograms of cocaine – with an estimated street value of two billion US dollars – was confiscated by Spanish authorities.

This figure, however, only represents 7 per cent of the total amount of cocaine in circulation throughout Spain.

Mrs Audrey Fitzpatrick denies clothing belonging to her missing daughter has so far been found in police searches.The Irish Independent, meanwhile said that a bra and a bag of clothes found on wasteland near Amy’s home, which it was thought may have been hers, did not belong to the missing girl. The paper said she was wearing a friend’s clothes when she disappeared and was carrying her own dirty clothes in a bag. It’s also reported that she had no money, mobile phone or passport with her.A further report that her black leggings had been found was discounted by her mother.
The search in Mijas for the 15 year old Irish girl, Amy Fitzpatrick, ended for the day at 3 pm on Wednesday, after combing the area for a little over five hours and failing to find anything of note. Francisco Ortega, the coordinator for the 112 emergency service in Málaga, said the search will continue on Thursday with the same personnel 250 Civil Guard, Protección Civil, local police and Red Cross volunteers – in areas which have not yet been covered. Seven sniffer dogs have also been taking part, plus air support from a Civil Guard helicopter. Wednesday’s search was split up into 12 areas, including the route Amy took home from the Calypso area to the Riviera del Sol Urbanisation in Calahonda on the night she disappeared, the evening of New Year’s Day. The search covered a radius of six kilometres.

Amy Fitzpatrick is the fourth young girl to disappear in the Malaga area. in 1999. Rocío Waninkhof Mijas Area in 1999.Ana Elena Lorente disappered in Alora September 2000. María Teresa Fernández 18 disappeared 2000 in Motril. Coin Sonia Carabantes in the summer of 2003.The convicted murder Tony King blamed others for Costa del Sol murders! but was convicted by a substancial body of evidence and yet the Spanish press still are concerned with the level of disapperances within this small area of the coast. Sonia Carabantes was found strangled and beaten five days after disappearing on 14 August while returning home from a fiesta.
Rocio Wanninkhof disappeared from her home on 9 October, 1999 and was found strangled and naked. She had not been sexually assaulted.Amy’s family were at the Cala de Mijas football ground on Wednesday, hoping to be allowed to take part in the search for any sign of the teenager. The search was restricted to experienced personnel, however. EFE reports that Guillermo Wanninkof was also there to show his support. His daughter, 19 year old Rocío, died in 1999 at the hands of the British man who’s serving 19 years for her death, Tony King.

"The spanish police have been searching, including helicopters. The spanish press have had the story on the front page. The area where she walked home is very seedy, not a place I would want to walk late in the evening. " quote from an EXPAT resident of Riviera del Sol.
Massive Police search operation: 15-year-old Amy Fitzpatrick originally from Dublin, but moved to Spain with her family three years ago.disappeared on New Year's Day after she left her friend's house to walk home.Spanish Police are now searching door to door ,nearby waste ground and the surrounding hills. Amy's cousin, Nicola Donohoe, appealed to the teenager to call her if she was safe. "This is your cousin Nicola, I've flown here today to see you," she said after jetting in to Malaga from Dublin "You can call the hotline number (0034) 686044181. Send me Bernadine's son's name, so I know it's really you. I'll come and meet you wherever you want privately.For the second day running, dozens of officers with sniffer dogs combed waste ground around the area in Spain's Costa del Sol where the 15-year-old was last seen.

Housewife Audrey Fitzpatrick, 39, from Dublin’s northside, said she was starting to fear the worst after not hearing from the 15-year-old since she rang to wish her Happy New Year. Amy Fitzpatrick, 15, disappeared after leaving their house to walk back to her nearby Costa del Sol home around 10pm on January 1. Civil Guard officers spent yesterday searching waste ground in the tourist resort of Riviera del Sol near Fuengirola close to the route she would have taken.
She said: “All I want is for Amy to pick up a phone and ring me or a friend and say she’s okay but at the back of my mind is that horrible fear that something’s happened to her and she can’t.
“The longer this goes on, the worst this gets. I’ve racked my brains for a reason as to why Amy might want to go off on her own and I can’t think of one.
“She’s never done anything like this before. We’ve traced the route we think she would have taken but found no clues as to what might have happened. It’s a route she knows well and involves a walk of about two minutes down a dirt track. I’m beside myself with worry.”
Audrey said: “She was like a typical ex-pat youngster over here, hated Spain one minute and loved it the next. But she was settling in reasonably well and getting to grips with the Spanish.
“The police have been brilliant and are doing all they can to help us find Amy so we’ve no complaints there.
“But we’ve reached a bit of a dead end,” she added.
Amy’s disappearance follows reports of a suspected paedophile targeting local children.
Several locals say a man in a white van has been spotted trying to pick up children and take them away.
Audrey was last night preparing to distribute hundreds of appeal posters showing her daughter’s face around the area with Amy’s step-father, Dave McMahon.
Amy’s older brother Dean, 17, spent the day taking police to see friends and find out if they had been in contact.
A police helicopter spent yesterday morning flying over waste ground behind Amy’s home.
The green-belt land, sandwiched between a motorway running along the Costa del Sol and houses leading down to the Mediterranean, is popular with local dog walkers.
Amy, who has dark, shoulder-length hair, was wearing a black jacket, dark tracksuit bottoms, a black Diesel T-shirt and black furry boots, when she was last seen.
Police have spoken to the Spanish man and his English ex-pat wife she was babysitting for before she went missing.
Amy’s step-father, who also comes from Dublin and works as an estate agent on the Costa del Sol, was last night too upset to speak.
Amy moved with her family to the Costa del Sol from her native Dublin three-and-a-half years ago.
Family pal, Ritchie Harris, from London, said: “Her family are beside themselves with worry. It was only a 10-minute walk home from the house where she was babysitting. She left about 10pm on New Year’s Day and hasn’t been seen or heard from since.
“Obviously we’re trying not to, but at the back of your mind in situations like this you always fear the worst. Amy is a very pretty girl and although she’s mature for her age and likes to mix with an older crowd, she’s only 15 and still very much of a youngster.”
Mr Harris said: “I’ve spent the night looking through Amy’s emails and speaking to her friends on MSN Messenger for any clues as to what might have happened to her.”

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