Christopher Wiggins, 42, pleaded guilty to possession with intent to supply cocaine from South America believed to be worth more than 650 million euro

Christopher Wiggins, 42, pleaded guilty to possession with intent to supply cocaine from South America believed to be worth more than 650 million euro (£580 million).
Wiggins, based in the Costa del Sol in Spain, pleaded guilty at a brief hearing in Cork Circuit Criminal Court.
Wiggins, was detained after Irish navy, gardai and customs swooped on the 60ft ocean-going boat, Dances With Waves, 170 miles off the west Cork coast last November. Intelligence agencies had tracked the boat for two months across the Atlantic.

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James “Pancake” Taylor was picked up by police trying to stop a violent drugs war that has broken out on the Costa del Sol.

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.

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Nikki Beach shooting Iranians have been arrested

Two Iranians have been arrested by the UDYCO Organised Crime Unit of the Marbella police, in connection with the shooting seen at Nikki Beach in Marbella last Saturday August 23. Judicial sources told La Opinión de Málaga that neither of the two men actually carried out the shooting. One of the two has now been released after making a statement to the police, while the other is still being held. It’s understood they took part in trouble between a group of Iranians and a group of Britons which broke out in the discotec ahead of the shots being fired. One 42 year old man needed surgery in the Costa del Sol hospital after being shot in both legs

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Freddie Thompson, leader of one of the feuding Drimnagh/Crumlin gangs,assassinated in Spain

Dublin gangland figure 'Fat' Freddie Thompson, leader of one of the feuding Drimnagh/Crumlin gangs, was alive or dead after rumours spread throughout Thompson's associates that he had been assassinated in Spain.Senior garda sources said last night there had been no reports from Spanish police of a murder. Thompson left Dublin last weekend for Spain amid reports of a growing threat to his life. He has been warned several times by gardai about threats to his life.The sources said that there was no evidence of a murder, or disappearance, but did confirm that Thompson's associates believe he is dead. Intelligence reached gardai early yesterday that Thompson's gang were unable to contact him and that it was completely out of character for him to lose contact with his gang.Thompson, 27, was in Estepona in southern Spain in February when one of his close associates, Paddy Doyle, also 27, was shot dead. The murder has not been solved but Spanish police indicated to gardai that they suspected Doyle -- and Thompson -- had run foul of Turkish drug traffickers.Thompson was on the scene shortly after the murder, though it was not absolutely established if he was travelling in the car in which Doyle was shot, though Spanish police believe he was. A short time later Spanish police seized a car in a nearby car park and found 110kg of cocaine.Thompson travels between Dublin, Amsterdam and the Costa del Sol. He was arrested in Rotterdam in October 2006 when police seized seven kilos of cocaine, six handguns and ammunition at an apartment he had been used. He evaded prosecution on a technicality when the case came to trial in February 2007.Thompson is also an associate of Martin Foley, who has been the target of several murder attempts -- the latest in January when he survived being hit by five bullets.The feud in which Thompson and Foley are caught up began in 2000 when a gang of young drug dealers from the Drimnagh-Crumlin area fell out after gardai seized cocaine in the Holiday Inn in Pearse Street. The gang split and the violence started with the murder of one of the gang in 2001.
Since then there have been nine more murders, dozens of attempted murders and hundreds of violent incidents. The intelligence reaching gardai about Thompson's disappearance come after an upsurge in activity from his enemies, who carried out at least one known assassination attempt early this month and were planning another murder last week.The spread of Irish gangland violence to Spain is not new and six known Irish criminals have been murdered there in the past four years. In 2004, the leaders of the Westies gang, Stephen Sugg and Shane Coates, were murdered and buried in a secret grave in Alicante. John McKeown, 48, said to be a major figure in international drug trafficking, was shot dead in January last year in Torrevieja. Sean Dunne, 32, from Coolock, was shot dead in September 2005, also near Alicante. And, the body of Cork man Michael 'Danser' Ahern was found stuffed into a freezer in Albuifera, Portugal, in September 2005.
Gardai who know Thompson said last week that the murder in Spain of his friend Paddy Doyle had badly affected him and he had been acting in an erratic manner since.
Doyle was Thompson's main "enforcer" and had personally carried out the assassinations of two of Thompson's rivals. Doyle had been living in Spain since 2005.
Twenty-five drug dealers in south inner Dublin have been cautioned by gardai that their lives are under threat arising from the bloody feud between the two Drimnagh and Crumlin-based gangs.
It is the largest number of such warnings ever issued in a single division.
Intelligence has led local detectives to intercept and prevent several murders, but sources say the threat to life is ever present, with gang members "floating around" looking for rivals and setting up people for assassination.
One attempt at murder narrowly failed earlier this month when a leading member of one gang, whose brother was killed in the seven-year feud, was shot at near the North Strand.
That plot was carried out by members of the gang led by the opponents of Freddie Thompson, who narrowly escaped assassination in February this year when gunmen opened fire on a car he was a passenger in at Estepona on the Costa del Sol.
Paddy Doyle, from Portland Row in north inner Dublin, who was a front seat passenger in the car, was shot dead. Gardai said that following yet another upsurge in activity around the south inner city, Thompson left for Spain last week. Gardai arrested a man in the south inner city last week who is suspected of carrying out gun and machete attacks on the homes of Thompson's mother and grandmother earlier this year. Gardai say that Thompson's opponents, the gang formerly led by Joseph Rattigan who was murdered in 2002, are currently pushing to try and take over control of the drugs trade in the south inner city. The Garda "G" District -- which covers the Crumlin and Drimnagh areas -- currently, has the highest homicide rate in the country, with eight killings since last October, though not all of these were gang related.
Local gardai say that this might be a record for a single Garda District, and that they are desperately short of resources to handle so many murder investigations.
Gardai in some of the worst affected areas in Dublin are critical of the fact that even though they are making regular arrests of gang members on drugs and firearms offences, they nearly all get bail.
"We're doing out job, the DPP is doing their job and the prisons are keeping them in. The courts aren't doing their job," one source said.The Government changed the Bail Act in 1997 following a referendum the previous year sparked by public outrage over the number of accused, including people charged with murder, who were routinely being released on bail. Garda sources say that some of the most dangerous criminals in Dublin are currently on bail. In many cases, they say, the criminals are at their most active when on bail because they are usually trying to amass money to look after family while they are in prison.
Meanwhile, gardai in Finglas and Coolock are continuing their search for the killers of the two men gunned down within 12 hours last weekend. Both Trevor Walsh from Finglas and Anthony Foster from Coolock are believed to have been killed by rival drug dealers. Gardai said the murders do not appear to have been linked. Asked about feuding that had been going on the Finglas-Blanchardstown area last week, one local garda said: "It's too complicated to explain." There are a number of rivalries and vendettas between drug dealers in the Finglas-Blanchardstown area that have arisen since the break up of the "Westies" gang and the murders of its leaders Stephen Sugg and Shane Coates in Spain two years ago; and the break up of the gang led by Martin Hyland, who was shot dead in December 2006. One source said that there are currently a number of criminals vying to take over the drugs trade in the north-western suburbs of the city, and this is expected to lead to more killings.The north inner city feud, which has claimed four lives over the past year, is still "live" according to gardai.
And despite claims earlier this year that a truce had been engineered in the Limerick feud between the Keane-Collopys and the McCarthy-Dundons, this too is "active".
A plot to murder a senior McCarthy-Dundon gang member was uncovered last month when gardai stopped a car containing two rival gang members and a former IRA assassin.
A map detailing the location of the gang member's home was found in the car, leading gardai to issue a caution to the man believed to have been targeted.

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Costa del Sol villas and quality apartments in good locations are crashing by as much as £20,000 to £80,000.

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.

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Small constructors and developers have closed down

Prices are falling in some areas, but because many properties are second or holiday homes, owners are reluctant to drop asking prices, unless they are anxious to sell. It was reported that many small constructors and developers have closed down in the past few months in the Valencia region, about 20% of the 13, 000 plus. Many of these small enterprises are in fact, front companies for the larger ones- they hire the illegal workers, enter into the shady deals, etc. and when things go wrong they simply fold their tents, declare bankruptcy and disappear. While the number of employees in major enterprises has recently shown a small increase, these numbers do not account for the thousands of contract , temporary or illegal workers who have been let go in recent months. To avoid paying for the August vacation or being forced to hire on a permanent basis, many thousands of construction workers were dropped at the beginning of the summer holiday period. There appears to be no way of knowing how many have been hired again, but the downturn in construction suggests that very few have work-and most have no social security net to fall back upon.

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