Cocaine Confidential (10 page)

Sammy says that the days when coke barons ride into town armed to the teeth, threatening to shoot and maim anyone who crosses them may soon disappear. ‘It's still going on here
big-time
, but it's well organised and low-key because only the real professional operators bring coke in through Galicia these days.'

Meanwhile, other less notorious areas of Spain have – in recent years – also become popular drop-off points for cocaine.

Trapped between an appalling recession and record 36 per cent youth unemployment, the people of Cadiz province in Spain's Andalusia region have increasingly turned to cocaine trafficking to pay their rent and feed their kids, according to data released by Spanish authorities recently. The province of Cadiz faces Morocco across the Atlantic Ocean, as well as Ceuta, the Spanish enclave on Moroccan soil just east of the Strait of Gibraltar. No wonder Cadiz province's rugged Atlantic coastline has become a popular transit point. From here, cocaine can easily be shipped overland by truck to Portugal, France, Italy, Germany and the Netherlands.

Significantly, 693 out of a national total of 2,134 properties seized from drug traffickers in 2010 were located in Cadiz. It is the only Spanish province with a special anti-narcotics magistrates division and three public prosecutors fighting the drug lords. One of the most popular drop-off points for
shipments of cocaine is the sleepy, under-used port of Barbate, population 23,000. There were 300 drug trafficking convictions there alone in 2011.

No wonder Barbate has attracted a number of ‘connected' foreigners keen to cash in on its undoubted potential.

With even higher unemployment than the national average, Barbate is littered with abandoned fishing boats decaying in the town's rundown port area. Yet many young people drive around in new cars or motorcycles and sport flashy gold chains, suggesting there is plenty of ‘black work' for those prepared to risk prison. Hans is a Dutch national who runs a cocaine ‘import/export' business from a tiny
pueblo
, near Barbate.

Just 30 kilometres of water separates Barbate from Morocco, the world's main producer of hashish. But it is the cocaine – which often travels across the same narrow Strait of Gibraltar – that brings the most cash into Barbate. ‘This place would have turned into a ghost town if it hadn't been for cocaine,' says Hans. ‘All the old-fashioned businesses closed down long ago. Now all you have is a few boutiques selling luxury designer goods for throwaway prices. Most of them are making a loss but survive because they are perfect businesses to launder money through.'

Cocaine is usually smuggled across the Strait of Gibraltar on fishing vessels, often alongside other ‘shipments', including illegal immigrants. Other loads of cocaine come in through articulated lorries carrying vegetables or textiles, which arrive at the understaffed ferry port from one of the twice-daily sailings from Tangier, in Morocco.

‘Everyone here knows that cocaine keeps Barbate afloat. It's not in anyone's interests to change that either,' explains Hans.

Back in May 2011, badly paid police in Barbate pinned a poster to the wall of their main police station which said
They owe us April
, referring to the late payment of their salaries. It was, says Hans, like music to the ears of the cocaine traffickers. ‘Poorly paid police are easier to bribe, naturally, and when we heard they hadn't even got their salaries, well, we all smiled.'

Other legitimate local businessmen were outraged by the failure to pay the police. One Barbate hotel owner said: ‘This was potentially a very dangerous situation because many officers would be tempted to take bribes from local cocaine traffickers to look the other way when shipments of cocaine came through the port. By not paying them it felt as if the authorities were saying, “Let the drug barons pay them instead.”'

The police were eventually given their back-pay after a national outcry. But Barbate's prospects don't seem any brighter. Victim of both the long-term death of the fishing industry that had previously sustained the town's economy,
and the catastrophic effect of the financial crisis on local government's budget, its proximity to North Africa offers a golden opportunity for smugglers to bring narcotics into the country virtually unhindered.

Hans first arrived in the area in 2001, when he was hired through a criminal associate to help a runaway European gangster find an isolated home where he would be safe from authorities. ‘I stumbled on this coastline and thought it was a gem of a place immediately. I found this guy a house and we became quite friendly, and I eventually rented myself a villa in the same village. He asked me to work on a few “jobs” with him and they mainly involved smuggling coke.'

When that runaway criminal was eventually arrested and extradited back to his home country, Hans did a deal through the man's lawyer to take over his ‘cocaine distribution business'. Hans explains: ‘It was perfect. I agreed to pay this guy 33 per cent of everything I earned. He then handed over his contacts and even threw in his smuggling yacht so I could simply continue the trafficking he'd been running from here.'

Hans was eventually introduced to the other criminal's Colombian cartel man in Madrid and managed to set up a deal to ‘handle' regular cocaine shipments into Barbate. ‘It's turned into a very cool job,' says Hans. ‘Often I don't even handle the coke myself. It's just in transit. I organise the next stage of the transport on behalf of the Colombians. They're happy because it helps them cut out the old-style local gangsters, who're always trying to rip them off.'

Today, Hans describes his ‘job' as: ‘Probably the nearest
you could get to a safe career in this industry. Really, it's true. I run a tight ship in every sense of the word and those around me, including the Colombians, know that my word is my bond. They don't hassle me because I deliver everything on time and nothing ever goes missing.'

Back in the small coastal village where Hans lives with his new wife and baby, neighbours know him as a ‘computer geek' who sold his firm to one of the internet giants. ‘No one here has a clue what I am really involved in and I intend to keep it that way.' He paused before continuing: ‘This area is ignored by tourists for ten months of the year because of the strong winds and storms that rage through here from the Atlantic. I like the sense of isolation I feel here. There simply aren't enough people living here fulltime to bother taking an interest in you. It's perfect.'

To many, the Costa del Sol means rolling fields of olive trees, converted
fincas
and luscious, golden sandy beaches. It's supposed to be the ideal of what a sunshine holiday resort area should be: lively, bustling, filled with happy-go-lucky folk minding their own business, motivated by a love of the good life and everything that money can buy. But lurking in among the whitewashed haciendas and towering apartment blocks are many of the biggest names in the cocaine underworld. They're often multimillionaires who describe themselves as ‘businessmen' and ‘property developers', although most only deal strictly in cash.

In the bright sunshine of today's Costa del Sol it is sometimes difficult to appreciate that this entire area has been developed in less than half most people's lifetimes. Sleepy coves with crystal clear water have been replaced by overcrowded beach bars featuring spivs, drug dealers and
timeshare salesmen and the noise of people and cars seems to dominate the atmosphere at all times of the day and night. No wonder the pace of life here is frenetic and local people are suspicious and unfriendly until they know precisely what it is you want.

Cocaine is the Costa del Sol's second biggest industry after tourism. It's not an easy statistic to handle, is it? Cocaine gangsters and tourism represent the gold rush for this area. And when drug barons spend their millions they help keep legitimate businesses afloat, especially in the thriving coastal resorts.

Ever shrinking Spanish police recruitment in the region combined with officers' assignments away from the usual criminal haunts have left the way clear for cocaine dealing, trafficking and consumption to thrive. Statistics from the Costa del Sol make worrying reading: of more than 600 criminal gangs examined, more than half dealt in cocaine, which means the big ‘firms' are raking in millions of pounds every month.

* * *

‘Fat Stan' heaved his 22-stone frame up into the driver's seat of his son's Range Rover with great difficulty. He was more used to motoring around in his own vintage Roller, once owned by sixties crooner Max Bygraves. Then, as he impatiently checked the time on his gold Rolex, a man holding a gun equipped with a silencer strolled alongside him in the car park of Málaga Costa Del Sol Airport.

Before ‘Fat Stan' even had a chance to plead for his life,
two shots rang out and his vast, blubbery body slumped against the dashboard. The shooter calmly walked to the nearest elevator and took it down to the arrivals car park without once looking back at the scene of carnage he'd just created.

‘Fat Stan' – who'd once lived in a quiet village outside Dublin – was just one of numerous villains who have turned the Costa del Sol into the cocaine badlands of Europe. The police found his body slumped in the Range Rover only after complaints from air travellers about a swarm of flies inside the vehicle. Twenty-five miles west of the airport lies the community of Puerto Banus, probably the most outrageous example of how cocaine has torn a hole through the heart of Spain. Over the past twenty-five years it's been home to more cocaine kingpins than anywhere else in the world.

With a population of 35,000 fulltime residents, Puerto Banus has a disproportionately large number of mock villas with long driveways, immaculate high brick walls, sophisticated closed circuit TV, electronically operated gates and a couple of guard dogs roaming the grounds. One well-known villain called his Rottweilers ‘Brinks' and ‘Mat' after his most infamous criminal enterprise – he even had centrally heated kennels specially built for them.

In the mid-1980s, multi-million-pound cocaine deals took over from security van robberies as the favoured source of income for many veteran UK gangsters who had sought refuge in Spain. As a result, dozens of money launderers and handlers of stolen property turned the Spanish coastline into
their number one earner. Even when the UK government finally established a proper extradition treaty between the two countries in 1987, British villains – many who knew nothing could be proved against them in a court of law – stayed on.

When I recently tried to talk to one cocaine baron and his wife through the electronically operated gates of their Puerto Banus villa, I was greeted by two Dobermanns (I didn't catch their names) and a few terse words spoken through the crackling intercom as this man's wife examined my face on the CCTV screen and then charmingly told me to ‘fuck off'.

Only a few weeks earlier, so I was told, this same criminal had been down at one of his favourite pubs in Estepona port when a rival villain popped in for a pint. He was so infuriated to see the other man that he walked out to his Bentley, pulled a shotgun out of the boot and stomped back into the tavern where he proceeded to pepper the ceiling with pellets.

Residents on this same criminal street still talk about the day one of his Dobermanns strayed into a neighbour's garden and a string of angry complaints ensued. He also accosted one Spanish neighbour and accused him of being a ‘nark' and threatened to ‘bury' him. He never received any more complaints about the dogs.

Living in the glorious Spanish sunshine certainly doesn't guarantee a long and happy life if your business is cocaine, though. Only recently one wealthy car dealer who specialised in selling cars with hard-to-trace Belgian number plates to cocaine gangsters was found shot dead in his black BMW
right slap bang in the middle of one of Marbella's most desirable residential areas. It was rumoured that he'd double-crossed a Colombian after trying to muscle into the cocaine trafficking game.

* * *

I first uncovered the shady world of cocaine smuggling some years ago when I was in southern Spain researching a book about British road rage killer and underworld kingpin Kenneth Noye. At the time, I knew little about the so-called Costa del Crime, which runs from Málaga west along the coast past Fuengirola and Marbella to Estepona and beyond. When I tracked down some real-life villains for my book on Noye they painted an extraordinary picture of a society within a society where cocaine criminals and tame police existed together in their own twisted netherworld, operating according to their own rules. Flying into Málaga airport and then turning right at the motorway exit was the equivalent of driving into a vast, sun-soaked cocaine resort.

Many of the ‘old-school' British criminals I interviewed for this book switched from robbery to cocaine after hearing about the massive profits from other prisoners as they served out their sentences in the 1970s. They learned how the combined costs of the coca leaves, the chemicals and the cheap labour back in South America added up to less than £1,000 to produce a kilo of 100 per cent pure cocaine, which would be sold out of Colombia for £6,000. Once transported to northern Spain, it would then go on the wholesale market for as much as £60,000 a kilo.

Moving from wholesaling to retailing guaranteed those astounding profits went even higher. After being cut a number of times by interim dealers to boost the weight and maintain the profit margin, the end product often contained no more than 15–20 per cent actual cocaine. ‘That was the sweetest aspect of all,' one old-time robber explained to me many years later. ‘You could bash on it and turn a gram into four grams. What a business!' So when those Brit villains did their sums they realised that by selling the coke for £60 a gram, with 1,000 grams to the kilo, all the deals running smoothly, the kilo purchased for £6,000 in Colombia could generate street sales in Europe of at least ten times that amount.