Banana Beach is one of three holiday home schemes excluded from an initiative to stop a decade-long dispute over the legality of many developments in

Banana Beach is one of three holiday home schemes excluded from an initiative to stop a decade-long dispute over the legality of many developments in Marbella. This spring the town’s new mayor, Angeles Muñoz – who has vowed to end years of actual or alleged corruption involving former Marbella council chiefs and developers – announced that 18,000 “illegal” homes in the area would be given retrospective building licences, making them legal. But she said three schemes, including Banana Beach, would not be retrospectively licensed and would have to be demolished, probably next year.

Yet spanishpropertyworld.com, the website quoted above, still advertises flats at Banana Beach from €259,888 (£243,300). The website – which does not publish its telephone number – makes no reference to the demolition threat and has not answered Cash’s repeated emails on the subject.

A property portal, esmoz.com, is advertising all sizes of apartments at Banana Beach for sale, but has also failed to answer enquiries about the scheme. It describes Banana Beach as “a beautiful, luxury development of apartments right on the beach-front in Marbella. There are extensive leisure facilities and, of course, spectacular sea views”.

The agency Interealty, which is selling Banana Beach flats through esmoz.com, has also declined to respond to telephone and email enquiries about the ads.

A spokesman for the Marbella authorities says the mayor wanted to license retrospectively all illegal homes but this has been prevented by regional and national governments. One reason may be that, unlike most other schemes, Banana Beach, built in 1998, is only 100 metres from the sea and breaks an earlier development law that prevents homes being constructed so close to the coast.

Hundreds of existing owners at Banana Beach, many of them Britons, face their homes being demolished, with no compensation offered.

Russell Ellis and his wife, Lynn, from Sidmouth in Devon, own a two-bedroom apartment in the scheme. They paid €117,000 for it in 2003 as a retirement haven; they used an independent Spanish lawyer and saw for themselves documents issued by Marbella council apparently confirming the legality of the land and building work. “We knew of risks buying in Spain so we were taking no chances,” says Russell, a businessman.

After enjoying two summers in their holiday home they were told in 2005 that the entire Banana Beach complex was built illegally. The documents they had seen were part of a deal by corrupt council officials, some of whom are now in jail. Similar bad news was given to almost 20,000 owners in other schemes.

“For four years I’ve been writing to solicitors, councillors and officials in Marbella and Madrid. No one replies. No one puts anything in writing. It’s as if everything and everyone is corrupt and no one wants to commit to doing anything,” says Russell.

Although 20,000 homeowners have been left in limbo, the Marbella mayor’s attempts to re-plan the town and draw a line beneath the illegal building controversy are lauded by many property industry specialists.

“The investigations into corruption should serve the town well,” says Rhona Hutchinson, of Integrated Relocation Spain, a buying agency. “No longer will [building] licences be so easy to obtain. Lawyers, notaries and mortgage providers will no doubt make it their business to dig deep when conducting searches.”

All this has taken its toll on property prices in Marbella. Villas for the super-rich remain expensive but more modest homes have fared particularly badly.

“The worst affected sector is that of apartments and townhouses under €600,000, of which there’s a vast over-supply,” Hutchinson says. “Prices have dropped by up to 30%, with isolated sales at even greater reductions.”

Barbara Wood, of The Property Finders, another buying agency, says: “The planning mess has been hugely damaging to the market in Marbella. If a cash buyer can find a serious seller, then there’s every possibility of securing a purchase at 30% to 40% less than it would have been at 2007 prices.”

Both Wood and Hutchinson believe the mayor is sincere in her attempt to end corruption in the local council. That is little consolation to Russell and Lynn Ellis, who have not visited their Banana Beach flat for two years and have no desire to return before it is demolished, which they say might happen next year.

“You hear of so many scams and illegal events in the Spanish property market,” says Russell. “The EU has criticised Spain for its ‘land grabs’, buyers get stung by developers who do not build their homes and fail to return deposits, and developments like ours are declared illegal after we buy them. Yet no one in authority in Spain appears to do anything to end these activities.

“We don’t want to go back there again. We’ve had enough.”

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fake 50 and 100 euro notes started popping up all over Europe

fake 50 and 100 euro notes started popping up all over Europe. Occasional arrests shed little light on who could be the masterminds behind the counterfeiting. After a few months, several European national police forces decided to pool all their information and send their case files to a heavily secured building in The Hague. There, a list of 250 suspects and 950,000 suspicious phone numbers was compiled.


"Making sense out of such a huge pile of information is our core business," said Tom Driessen, a deputy director for Europol, the European Police Office, based in the Netherlands. His organisation is a hub for information that can be useful for countries collected by the EU’s 27 national police forces. Europol is meant to be the EU’s answer to international organised crime.

A gang off the streets

A group of analysts working for Europol sifted through the phone numbers and list of suspects and managed to identify the structure of the entire gang. Last spring, 25 main suspects and a number of accomplices were arrested, putting an end to this Polish counterfeiting operation.

"Most countries lack the capability to carry out this type of analysis," Driessen said. "They also operate within a national perspective. It it is on these two aspects that we can add value."

Europol thus plays an important role in investigations of cross-border crimes such as human trafficking, illegal drug and arms trading, money laundering and other forms of financial fraud, and child pornography. Earlier this month, Belgian police arrested a network of Iraqis and Indians on suspicion of human trafficking. This week, Yesterday the German police arrested a group of Vietnamese allegedly involved in the same crime. Both received assistance from Europol.

Not knocking down doors

Driessen emphasised that Europol cannot be compared to the American FBI. You will never see Europol officers kicking down doors with their guns drawn. Its headquarters in The Hague mainly serves as a centre for data collection and analysis. If arrests need to be made based on these investigations, they are made by national police forces.

Even closer European cooperation is in the works. The Lisbon Treaty, which went into effect this December, creates ample room for it, both in the realm of police work and in collaboration between public prosecutors throughout Europe. Under the new treaty, a qualified majority among the 27 ministers of justice and internal affairs is now sufficient for decisions regarding police matters. Unanimity is no longer required, which means no single nation can block proposals for greater cooperation.

"It would be good if the process were sped up a little, because we often find ourselves playing a game of catch-up," Driessen said. "Europe has become a unified market for criminals too. Drug dealers and human traffickers run multinational operations. A criminal organisation can ship their drugs through Italy, launder the proceeds in England, and coordinate operations out of Paris, for example. To effectively investigate and gather evidence in such cases, you need to bring all this information together. That is our job."

Taking the lead

Driessen, a former Dutch police chief, said that, over the last few years, cooperation already improved greatly. "In the 1990s we only started to react when shipload full of drugs popped up on the horizon. Today, the EU is looking at ways to fight the overall influx of drugs. We have become more ambitious: we don’t just want to arrest a certain criminal or confiscate some drugs. We are analysing the entire process.”

He would like to see Europol become more pro-active. "We have established an extensive, secure and reliable network, and are successfully coordinating information. I’d like to take the process one step further. Europol could draft threat analysis regarding certain types of organised criminality and advise countries how to react and which other countries to join forces with. We want to do more than support and facilitate. We want to initiate."

Intensifying cooperation between police and public prosecutors would be another important step to better fight international crime. At the European level, this would mean closer cooperation between Europol and Eurojust, both headquartered in The Hague.

Eurojust’s setup is different from Europol. It is essentially an organisation where delegates from national prosecutorial offices facilitate cooperation and information exchange across borders. Eurojust only enters the picture after a judicial investigation has begun.

The European justice department

"In a perfect world, there would be no need for Eurojust," said Arend Vast, a former public prosecutor in the Netherlands, now the Dutch delegate to Eurojust. He pointed out that any prosecutor or investigating judge in the EU is free to contact colleagues in other countries. "But easy it is not. Within the union, we have 27 member states, 23 languages and 30 different systems of law, all with different powers and responsibilities. And not everybody speaks English or French."

Eurojust helps to transmit international requests for cooperation from judges or prosecutors in member states. It also coordinates larger investigations. "We are building bridges," Vast said. " Imagine a complex fraud case, with a criminal organisation that is active in six different countries. It would then be important to coordinate arrests, search warrants and impounding of property, but also to agree on how to prosecute."

Complicated cross-border cases are generally discussed at special meetings organised in The Hague. Smaller cases can be settled by quick direct contact between national representatives, who are down the hall. "A Swedish colleague informed me of a drug shipment coming in through the Netherlands and Germany, wondering if we could ensure ‘controlled delivery’, with a police observation team following the transport up to the national border, " Vast recounted. "The Swedes thought we wouldn’t comply, since a similar request in the past had them waiting for four days only to see it denied. I suggested that my Swedish colleague get himself a cup of coffee from the machine. In the meantime, I called a colleague in the Dutch national prosecutor’s office and asked him what we could do. When my Swedish colleague returned with his coffee, it was all arranged. Short lines of communication are important, as is the respect and trust you can build in personal contacts."

Towards a European prosecutor

Cooperation between European judicial partners has improved, but major obstacles remain. Vast expects that a European public prosecutor – an office made possible by the Lisbon Treaty – will be some time in the making. All the more important, he adds, to ensure that international coordination by the various national police corpses and public prosecutors is intensified in the meantime.

Both Driessen and Vast expect that the European Union will take steps towards closer cooperation in the coming months, when the Lisbon treaty has to be translated into practical arrangements . But, for the moment, executive powers will remain at the national level, with European organisations like Europol and Eurojust coordinating and helping where they can.

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Barbate got nicknames such as 'lawless city' and 'city of crime'

grass trade is "like a party, and everyone in Barbate is enjoying it", said Antonio. Although he denied any part in the flourishing drug trade in the southern Spanish fishing town, he was willing to tell how much money can be made in trafficking hashish. "Everybody here knows that anyway," he said, sitting down in his office at the municipal sports complex where he does odd jobs at the weekend.
Antonio, who is referred to by anyone who knows him as 'El Feo' (the Ugly), sported a trimmed mullet and fake Armani sunglasses as he explained what happens when a smuggling boat from nearby Morocco lands in Barbate. "Several people are needed to safeguard the load," he said. "The price is determined based on the risk someone takes."

One kilo of hashish used to have a price of one million pesetas, currently around 6,000 euros. "For every transport, five to ten 'bushmen' are needed. The informers on the look-out earn half a kilo, so 3,000 euros. The runners who bring the load to a safe place get three kilos. And there are the people who guard the stash, they get five kilos. That's how it works," Antonio said.

Barbate, a town of 24,000, has a national reputation for being Spain's most important transit port for hash. Smuggling boats from Morocco go unnoticed between the busy sea traffic in the narrow Straits of Gibraltar. Once they reach Barbate, they drop their cargo on the beach or in the harbour, where it is quickly collected, hidden and transited. For years, this happened so openly, Barbate got nicknames such as 'lawless city' and 'city of crime'.Part of the trade moved to other ports in the Cádiz region after the Guardia Civil implemented a new radar system a couple of years ago. But the streets of Barbate show there is still a lot of drug money in circulation; as easily spent as it is made. After lunch, a few young men, often with a shy, younger girlfriend by their side, flaunted their expensive cars on the boulevard. Others raced through the town on the most costly and new motorcycles.Meanwhile, the village's economy, like the rest of Spain, is suffering. Unemployment is at 36 percent, almost double the already high national average. Fishing generates less money every year and tourism is not as developed here as it is in nearby coastal resorts. Anyone who doesn't want to be part of the drug trade but make some money during these times of crisis has two options, said Antonio: "collect pine cones or catch squid." Neither of those will make a fortune.
This is why drug trafficking is very popular amongst youngsters, said José Cagigas. He is a physical education teacher at a high school in the poorest part of Barbate. He estimates almost half of his students' parents are unemployed. "Many of my students drop out. The only way to keep them in school is to threaten their parents with losing their welfare. But that triggers some children to make trouble at school, so we have to suspend them and they can stay home for another month."In his first year as a teacher here, he sometimes tried to change such kids. "I would tell them they are ruining their future," Cagigas said. "They would answer: 'I can always go into hash'. I would reply: 'I don't know anyone over 30 who has not been in jail because of trafficking'. But they would start bragging in class how they had an uncle who was 45 and had never been caught."Elisa Cid is a pro-bono attorney at the local court. Over 90 percent of the cases she deals with, she estimates, is related to the drug trade. But she does not agree with Antonio that all of Barbate is profiting from it. "It may seem like that, with the media attention and the quick money that is being flashed around. But I believe no more than 20 percent of the population depends on drug money."Cid, who was born in Barbate, said the youngsters in town don't realise there is no future for them here. "Everyone with any potential should leave to work or study. No one is stopping them."
But the escape offered by the drug trade is keeping many here, said Cagigas. "Even without the drug trade, it is difficult enough for a normal kid to grow up here without problems. My colleagues and I are surprised whenever that does happen." He agrees with Cid, every one with a bit of talent should "get out of here".

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