staggering tale of corruption and greed, the trial, which began on September 27, sees the collapse of a web that included three mayors, 15 councillors and up to a dozen foreign investors.
Expected to last at least a year, the prosecution is seeking a total of 500 years for a string of offences including bribery and corruption, money laundering, tax evasion and a misuse of municipal funds.
While its accused include celebrated – and even Sean Connery as a side act – the case centres around a money laundering web that was spun by former chauffeur turned Svengali, Juan Antonio Roca.
Born in Cartagena, Murcia, in 1953, Roca moved to Marbella in 1991 after his property development company Comarsa was declared bankrupt.
Roca is a man who had total control over the town hall
But following a meteoric rise, he went from being the late mayor Jesus Gil y Gil’s chauffeur to becoming the councillor for ‘Urban Planning’ for a staggering 11 years from 1992 until 2003.
Roca and his string of accomplices are accused of accepting bribes in exchange for building licences from a string of real estate promoters.
In just four years alone (from 2002 to 2006) a total of 19 agents are said to have paid more than 33 million euros to Roca and his cohorts.
It is alleged that during his time in office, Roca amassed a fortune worth at least 125 million euros that included a string of properties, a huge collection of exotic animals and a private art portfolio that included a Miro that he kept in the loo.
As judge Miguel Ángel Torres stated in his opening statement: “Roca is a man who had total control over the town hall. The councillors were subordinate to him.
“He is the person who all developers went to in order to see their wishes satisfied. And in over 15 years he went from being on the dole to amassing tens of millions of euros.”
But now the so-called ‘boss’ of Marbella is facing 30 years in prison, with more than 810million euros in fines.
And interestingly, he is the only one of the 95 defendants who is currently behind bars, serving a previous sentence for a separate case.
The Malaya case first came to public attention back in March 2006, when police vans first turned up to raid Marbella Town Hall.
However the extent of corruption first became hinted at during the earlier 2003 Operation Ballena Blanca (or ‘white whale’), which saw 41 people arrested and over 250 million euros recovered in a huge separate money laundering case.
The crackdown saw almost two thirds of Marbella’s councillors pulled in
In what was the largest money laundering operation ever mounted in Europe, Spanish police were allowed to tap the phones of suspects – a number of lawyers and notaries – for up to a year.
Incredibly, investigators discovered that much of the laundering appeared to be going through Marbella town hall itself.
It led Judge Torres to call for a parallel investigation – codenamed ‘Operation Malaya’ – which soon led to a series of high profiles officials arrested.
Included in this list were mayor Marisol Yague, her deputy Isabel García Marcos, the former
chief of Marbella’s police Rafael del Pozo, and former mayor Julián Muñoz.
The crackdown saw almost two thirds of Marbella’s councillors pulled in, as well as a series of well known construction and real estate bosses.
The scale of the corruption proved so pervasive that control of Marbella town hall had to be temporarily handed over to a caretaker administration appointed by the Junta until local elections could take place in 2007.
The first few weeks of the trial have certainly proved eventful.
During the initial proceedings, Roca’s lawyer, Rocio Amigo, (who took up his defence just a month ago, after his previous barrister stood down) tried to get the whole case suspended before it had begun.
In particular she claimed that certain real estate documents were missing and some of the accusations had already been dealt with.