Three Britons have been handed prison sentences for their involvement in a recent late-night brawl in Ronda.Three received prison sentences of six months each for attacking two local police officers and a local resident. As they have no previous convictions, the jail terms were deferred but will be taken into account if they offend again.
In addition to the prison terms, they also have to pay 1,500 euros in compensation to one of the officers, 800 euros to the local resident, who received a face wound requiring four stitches, plus 36 euros to the second policeman.

Four prisoners who took three prison officers hostage at Picassent jail, near Valencia, yesterday evening have been split up and transferred to different jails. The crisis began at around 6pm yesterday evening when four prisoners from the high-security wing took three officers hostage, apparently using one of their fellow prisoners as a bargaining chip.
Two of the three officers, both in their twenties, were released shortly after midnight and following all-night negotiations, the third man was set free shortly after 6am this morning.

A 66 year old British man resident in Fuengirola (Málaga) has been arrested accused of heading up a gang trafficking cannabis between Spain and the UK.
Two weeks ago, a suspicious trailer was intercepted on its way to a company that runs daily shipments to the UK. It was found to contain industrial-sized water purifiers, though police sniffer dogs later detected 2,500kg of cannabis resin hidden inside the machines. A further 1,500kg was found inside a warehouse on a Barcelona industrial estate from which the lorry had been spotted leaving.
The British man, whose initials have been confirmed as AMT, visited Cataluña regularly to ski, always staying in luxury hotels.
The investigation started last October when Guardia Civil officers seized 1,200kg cannabis found hidden inside a shipment of computer terminals, although they were unable to find sufficient evidence implicating AMT to arrest him on that occasion.

Ken MacIntyre from Ayrshire and his partner Bill had been drinking in bars near Plaza de la Constitución in the old town on Friday night when the attack took place.
The couple left Eros bar in Calle Santa Faz around 04.00 and headed in the direction of Plaza de la Constitución near the popular tapas strip.
They walked through Calle San Miguel and were attacked near Domino bar.
A friend told Costa Blanca News that Ken and Bill were allegedly tapped on the shoulder by two men who snatched their jewellery and attacked them until they fell to the floor.
Sadly, Ken took a severe beating and died at the scene of the crime

A 39 year old taxi driver was arrested today accused of raping an 18 year old British tourist last Saturday night in Maspalomas (Gran Canaria). According to the victim's testimony, she caught the taxi at around 2am on Sunday morning in the Plaza de Maspalomas and asked the driver to take her back to her hotel. Instead, she alleges, he drove her first to a piece of waste ground where he raped her in the back of the vehicle before dropping her off at her hotel.

since the introduction of tougher penalties for dangerous drivers at the start of this month, a total of 154 people were arrested for traffic infractions, 151 of whom tested with more than 0.6mg alcohol per litre of aspirated breath.

The other three were caught speeding: one was arrested for driving at more than 60km an hour above the legal limit on an urban street, while the other two were clocked doing more than 80km an hour above the limit on the freeway.

criminal offence to drive drunk or speed, and anyone caught doing so could face a prison sentence of up to six months. If they are caught committing both crimes together, the sentence could be up to two years.
The limit at which drunk driving becomes a crime is 0.60 milligrams of alcohol in exhaled air, while for speeding to be considered a crime the driver would have to exceed 200km/h on a highway or 110km/h in an urban area.

Except for people with prior criminal records, most sentences would be substituted for a fine. In the first two days of the legislation going into effect, 154 people were arrested.

Three out of every 100 Spaniards over the age of 15 paid a bribe last year, according to figures released Thursday by anti-corruption organisation Transparency International

Operation White Whale is the first time police have established a direct link between organised crime and Spain's booming construction and property industries. Half of all new construction starts in Spain take place on the Mediterranean coast.

In a boon for international criminals, established practice enables notaries to absent themselves for a few minutes when property contracts are signed, allowing the buyer to hand over “dinero B”, a substantial amount of undeclared cash. Unlike bankers, public notaries are not required to “know their clients” or establish the provenance of money exchanged in property transactions.

The Civil Guard,estimates that about 550 criminal groups operate in Spain, about half of them foreign. Last year, police made 323 arrests in connection with organised crime. “Criminals are businessmen these days,” says a chief inspector in a unit that fights organised crime. “They want good travel connections, an efficient banking sector, nice weather and anonymity. They get all that in Málaga.”

Seven Britons were involved in a brawl with a group of Spaniards in the early hours of Saturday morning in the centre of Ronda.

Police in Benalmádena Costa nabbed a bag snatcher just moments after he had robbed three tourists on Friday afternoon. The alleged thief, identified only as a Romanian man, was picked up at 1.30pm on Calle Carril del Siroco. When police grabbed him, he was about to steal the bags of two British tourists.

A minor was detained in Málaga last week in a crackdown on child pornography. A Guardia Civil investigation into the exchange of images by mobile phone and the Internet has seen 40 people arrested across the country. A specialist team which deals with under-age suspects took part in the Málaga arrest.

A further wave of four robberies in Sotogrande and Pueblo Nuevo de Guadiaro have been reported to the police. The thieves were looking for money and jewellery and used the same modus operandi as on previous occasions. They entered all of the properties while owners were asleep.

A Malaga woman who was searching for information about babies on internet came across two files containing images of children being sexually abused by adults. She reported her find to the National Police and the resulting investigation led to the exposure of a major paedophilia ring. After tracing the origins of the files discovered on internet the police made 13 arrests, two in the province of Malaga, and thousands of files containing child pornography have been seized.

Police investigators in the United Kingdom helped uncover the links between British criminals and the White Whale case in Marbella. The British police were investigating the Eprom Fraud, which is expected to have involved as much as 800,000 euros. They investigated what happened to this money, gained through a fraudulent scheme by which the owners of Jade Technologies Limited, Harvey Levin and his wife, were selling pre-paid electronic circuits to unsuspecting customers at exceptionally low cost. Jade Technologies thus accumulated a fortune with the sale of components that their customers never saw, the components never being manufactured. In the traditional way that this type of business is done, the vast profits were allegedly transferred through an Australian company to the Egremont Corporation, represented in Spain by Fernando del Valle, who in turn transferred them to the Duconte Holdings and Gainford Corporation, also run from the Marbella office. The principal shareholder of the Gainford Corporation was Harvey Levin.

According to the police, three of the companies run from the offices of Fernando del Valle in Marbella, Silverkey Properties, Gates Investments and Fun Fair Investments, served to launder money gained from the trafficking of hashish. The foreign connection here was with a Tunisian named Sophiane Hambli, a known drug trafficker arrested in San Pedro de Alcántara during a shoot-out last year. Hambli was on the run from the French police, after having escaped from prison in France, where he was serving time for drug trafficking and other crimes. The laundering of this drug money, it appears, was being done through the Silverkey Properties and Garden Gates Investments companies, and Hambli worked closely with his father-in-law, Mabrouk Chebicheb, who was also detained in the Marbella operation, and his wife. The other company run from Del Valle’s office, Fun Fair Investments, was allegedly linked to Ghali Lamrani and Jamal Zegzaoui, two Moroccans wanted by various police forces for their membership of a cocaine trafficking gang. They had been arrested in the possession of three thousand kilos of cocaine and a thousand kilos of hashish. The Marbella companies had allegedly been used to launder 720,000 euros of illicit gains by this gang.

Spanish authorities claim that much of Del Valle´s real estate operations were a means to launder cash for up to nine international organized crime groups. In particular, the authorities allege that the Del Valle law firm set up anonymous trusts - possibly hundreds of shell companies - in nearby Gibraltar, but also in other places likes the Netherlands and the Isle of Man

Since news of the operation hit the press, Spanish authorities have increasingly sought to place some of the blame on Gibraltar, which "is not cooperating in the fight against money laundering," according to Conde Pumpido.

As a sign of the international crime element an Interpol report notes: "There is an exceptionally large number of Estonian and Russian professional criminals carrying out, besides a large scale hashish and cocaine trafficking, remarkable sex business in the numerous hotels and restaurants of Costa del Sol." Meanwhile, according to Online Security, "Italian crime groups' longtime investments in real estate and entertainment enterprises--particularly gambling casinos--in Germany, France, Monaco, Spain's Costa del Sol, and the Caribbean are conduits for money laundering."

Over the last 18 months fines have been imposed by the local police for driving over the alcohol limit, speeding, using a motorbike without a crash helmet, operating a mobile phone while at the wheel and so on.

However while the tickets have been issued by the police many of the fines have not been sent out because the town hall says it cannot afford the postage costs. Unless the person receives the notification by post then the fine cannot be collected although the CSI-CSIF union says that some people have paid voluntarily.