Spanish king forced son-in-law to quit job in 2006

 

 

King Juan Carlos told his son-in-law in 2006 to cut ties with a company now mired in corruption allegations, an official at Spain's royal palace said Sunday. Authorities are probing the activities of a non-profit company run by Inaki Urdangarin between 2004 and 2006. "(The king) ordered him to stand down from his activities and he sold his shares," said the official, who works at the royal palace's press office, confirming reports in the Spanish press. "He was told he shouldn't work for himself and it would be better if he worked overseas." Urdangarin, 43, also known as the Duke of Palma de Mallorca, now works for Spanish telecommunications giant Telefonica in Washington, where he lives with with his wife, Infanta Cristina. The scandal, the first to hit Spain's royal family in years, centres on Urdangarin's time at the helm of the Instituto Noos, now suspected of siphoning off money from contracts paid by the regional government of the Balearic Islands, where the institute is based. The royal palace did not uncover any lies or fraud in 2006, the source said. However, a royal legal advisor found signs the Noos institute was possibly involved in commercial activities not consistent its non-profit mission. On December 12, the royal palace froze Urdangarin out of official activities over the scandal. The royal family traditionally maintains a discreet profile in Spain, where Juan Carlos is widely respected, credited with guiding the country to democracy after the death of the dictator Francisco Franco in 1975. The scandal has nevertheless caused anger at a time when ordinary Spaniards are being squeezed by spending cuts and a lack of jobs, with an unemployment rate of 21.5 percent. 

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Spain's longest-serving inmate received a government pardon yesterday that saw him and his family convinced that he would walk free immediately

After 35 years in jail and eight successful breakout attempts, Spain's longest-serving inmate received a government pardon yesterday that saw him and his family convinced that he would walk free immediately – only for him to remain behind bars.

Since 1976, Spanish courts have found Miguel Angel Montes Neiro guilty of more than 30 robberies and armed burglaries, many committed while on the run. But even as a spokesman for the Spanish government, Jose Blanco, confirmed yesterday that Montes Neiro, 61, had received a pardon for two of his multiple crimes, another outstanding sentence – for robbery and illicit possession of firearms – will see him remain in jail.

Montes Neiro, from the province of Granada in southern Andalusia, was predictably delighted when news of the pardon broke yesterday lunchtime, telling his family by phone: "Don't come to the prison gates when I get out, I want to walk the first two or three kilometres so I can feel the fresh air like a free man."

However, it emerged that his pardon was only partial and that a court review of a 13-year sentence was still pending.

Montes Neiro spent his first night in the cells in 1966, aged 16, when he was arrested for stealing a packet of cigarettes. His first formal sentence came a decade later for desertion – but not before he had spent 10 days in army prison for stealing a sub-machine gun.

During his numerous breakouts, the most recent in 2009 when he spent two hours on self-imposed parole to attend the wake for his mother, Montes Neiro found the time to marry twice and have two children – and to commit a string of hold-ups and kidnaps.

Montes Neiro's record is as varied as it is long. He has been convicted of beating up hostages on three occasions, and he once formed part of a gang that broke into a Granada home and threatened to cut off a man's thumb unless his wife revealed the location of his safe.

His escapes include one from a maximum security prison in the Spanish colony of Ceuta in 1979, but perhaps his most dramatic breakout came in 1981: after hanging himself in a staged suicide bid, breaking two ribs, he escaped from prison hospital in a taxi.

On the run for a total of three years, his repeated recapture was facilitated by his tendency to remain in or near his home town. His one spell abroad, in Morocco, ended when he returned to Granada because he missed his family.

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Spanish, Italian police smash drug smuggling ring

 

Spanish and Italian police made five arrests while busting a drug-trafficking ring that for years smuggled cocaine from South America to Europe, investigators said on Friday. The group arranged for narcotics to be put on merchant ships headed to Europe. Just before the vessels arrived at their destination, the smugglers would dump cocaine packages overboard, Spanish police said in a statement. Members of the gang waiting in inflatable boats would then pick up the cocaine and take it to shore, from where it was distributed to customers in Spain and Italy, officials said.Two members of the group were detained in the Italian port city of Genoa in March in a joint operation by Spanish and Italian police. Police detained another three members of the group, including its leader, three months later in the northwestern Spanish coastal region of Galicia. "During the search of the home of the ringleader, police found a vault camouflaged behind the wall of the cellar, which housed security cameras that monitored the rest of the house as well as two large safes, cash, valuable watches, computer equipment and documents," police said in the statement. Police also seized 55 kilos (120 pounds) of cocaine, three cash-counting machines and five cars. Spain is the main gateway to Europe for cocaine from Latin America and for cannabis from north Africa

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The alleged members of the Dominican-based Trinitarios gang all face charges of racketeering, narcotics conspiracy and gun trafficking

Suspects accused of selling guns and drugs.

Authorities collared 38 Bronx and upper Manhattan gangbangers Wednesday after a two-year probe into a notorious crew, officials said.

The alleged members of the Dominican-based Trinitarios gang all face charges of racketeering, narcotics conspiracy and gun trafficking, authorities said.

The undercover investigation — which involved officers from the NYPD, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Homeland Security — netted about $25,000 worth of drugs and 12 firearms in Wednesday’s raid, police said.

One weapon recovered, a Mac-11 machine gun, was painted the same shade of green the gang uses in its colors.

Federal prosecutors said the crew committed and planned violent acts, including murder, to protect its turf from rival gangs that include the Bloods, Crips, the Latin Kings and Dominicans Don’t Play.

“We believe we put a big dent in the Trinitarios gang,” said Capt. Lorenzo Johnson, the commanding officer of the NYPD’s Bronx gang squad.

Six people who were connected to the gang members were also arrested, police said. Authorities were still looking for about 12 other members of the gang.

Prosecutors said the Trinitarios sold firearms, including semiautomatic rifles, a shotgun and handguns, and transported them across state lines.

Numerous members of the Trinitarios who were arrested are also members of a smaller splinter gang, the Bad Boys, prosecutors said.

Johnson said most of suspects were already “known to the department in some manner,” and had long terrorized several blocks in Washington Heights and parts of the Bronx, including Marble Hill.

“Anytime we can help the community feel safer is a good day,” he said.

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Glenn Mulcaire, the private eye at the centre of the News of the World phone hacking scandal, has been arrested

 

Glenn Mulcaire, the private eye at the centre of the News of the World phone hacking scandal, has been arrested by Scotland Yard detectives pursuing a fresh investigation into phone intercepts, according to a person familiar with the inquiry. Officers working on Operation Weeting – the Metropolitan Police’s second probe into phone hacking at News International, which owned the now-defunct Sunday tabloid – announced on Wednesday that they had arrested a 41-year-old man who was being held on suspicion of conspiracy to hack voicemail messages and perverting the course of justice.  Mr Mulcaire is the 16th person to be arrested under the new operation, and has already served a six-month prison sentence in 2007 after pleading guilty to intercepting phone messages. He was arrested at his home in Surrey in a dawn swoop and held in a south London police station. Detectives on Operation Weeting have used the private investigator’s notebooks – which contain the names of nearly 5,800 potential victims and run to around 11,000 pages – as the basis for their investigation, trawling through the documents to identify those who may have been hacked. The hacking scandal was reignited this summer when it was revealed that the News of the World had hacked into the voicemail messages of the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler after she went missing in 2002, leading her parents to believe that she was still alive. Last month, Mr Mulcaire released a statement through his lawyer, denying that he had deleted voicemail messages on Ms Dowler’s phone. “[He] did not delete messages and had no reason to do so,” the statement read. The Financial Times could not reach Mr Mulcaire’s lawyer for comment on Wednesday. Chris Bryant, a Labour MP and suspected hacking victim, told the FT he was “quite encouraged” that Mr Mulcaire had been taken in for questioning. “I always thought this was a logical next step, but not one [the police] would take unless they had sufficient fresh evidence to put to [Mr Mulcaire], and it seems now they do,” he said. News of the arrest came as lawyers for Andy Coulson, the News of the World’s former editor, argued in the High Court on Wednesday that the tabloid’s parent company should continue to pay Mr Coulson’s legal bills arising from the criminal investigation into phone hacking. It emerged during the course of Mr Coulson’s evidence that News Group Newspapers – a subsidiary of News International – had continued to reimburse Mr Coulson for legal fees relating to his involvement in the judge-led phone hacking inquiry and parliamentary select committee hearings. The court heard that Mr Coulson had received a letter from Tom Mockridge, the chief executive of News International, in August informing him of an “immediate cessation” of payments in relation to criminal legal fees.

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