Cocaine Confidential (11 page)

‘Finding the right supplier was the key,' one gangster told me. ‘Without that source, none of it meant anything.'

Back in the 1980s, the Medellín and Cali cartel men on the Costa del Crime were telling the British villains: ‘Don't worry, my friend. We can get you all the cocaine you want, if you have the money.'

The cartel was formed in early 1982 after the Colombian guerrilla movement M-19 (
Movimiento 19 de Abril
) kidnapped a cocaine tycoon's sister. In response another group called MAS (
Muerte a Secuestradores
, Death to Kidnappers) was quickly set up by three rival cocaine barons called Jose Ochoa, Carlos Lehder and Pablo Escobar. Their alliance soon became known as the Medellín cartel. A cartel is a group of people who agree on things like commodity prices. ‘It's a bit like General Motors, everything's connected,' explained one old hand from South America.

When Colombian President Betancur tried to rid his country of cocaine exporters in 1985 after immense pressure from the Americans, the Medellín cartel simply switched its attention to Europe, which meant focusing on Spain and turning it into their cocaine gateway. Europe would provide a ripe, young market of wealthy upwardly mobile yuppies. Eurotrash and cocaine was as natural a combination as strawberries and cream.

That's when some of the ageing British gangsters already in southern Spain approached the cartels offering more security than the predominantly Spanish drug lords who were acting as middlemen for the South Americans at the time. They also offered the Colombians an entrée into the previously untapped UK market, which at that time was supplied with a relatively small amount of cocaine by a number of different gangs.

Before this, the Colombians had preferred not to supply the British market directly from Spain because they knew that, as foreigners, they would stand out and be asking for trouble if they tried to open shop in the UK. Now they needed British ‘partners' they could trust, facilitators who knew how to get the stuff into the UK safely and in much larger amounts than had been done in the past.

For their part, the British villains in southern Spain back in the 1980s knew that once they had the UK end of the cocaine operation properly tied up, money would start pouring in.

So, at an age when most men were contemplating a life
of uninterrupted retirement, a small posse of greying British villains in Spain were chasing a piece of the Europe-wide multi-million-pound cocaine industry based in their backyard. The profits were potentially phenomenal. An investment of £20,000 in a shipment of cocaine would bring a return of £160,000. Usually, four investors worked together to buy 100 kilos at a time.

At first, some of these Brit gangsters were happy to ‘buy into loads'. That meant making their living from partly financing other people's deals and having virtually no direct contact with the actual drugs. In order to get the really big money, however, they knew they'd have to get their fingers dirty. They all knew cocaine was easier to transport than any other drug as well as kicking back much bigger profits in the long run.

The Brits let it be known on the Costa del Sol that they were willing to pay cash upfront. Not long after this, one British vet got a call about a ton of cocaine hidden in a cave on the Costa Brava by a bunch of young wannabe gangsters. This bullish character organised a search party to drive up the coast and locate the drugs, steal them and then sell them through to the UK. The British gangsters also contacted associates back in the UK, whose teams of smugglers were renowned for transporting virtually anything across continents without problems. It was a good system, and for a couple of decades, it worked.

‘For more than twenty years it was a civilised industry,' explained one old UK criminal based in Estepona, near
Marbella. ‘Then things started to change and that's when most of us realised it was time to pull back and head up into the hills for a safe and happy retirement.'

These days, Spanish authorities are either powerless to prosecute or, in some cases, simply turn a blind eye to the often murderous behaviour of the cocaine gangsters on the Costa del Crime. Local police often take the attitude that, because the majority of cocaine shipments never stay in Spain for long, most of the violence between criminals is not worth their while investigating. Even when cocaine gangsters do get arrested, they know there are many ways to avoid jail. As one old timer says: ‘The trick is to get bail. About £10,000 normally does it. And once you're out, you're out for ever. New name, new apartment – and the world is your oyster once more.'

But ironically it's precisely this lawlessness that is troubling many of these older villains. Tucked away behind all the popular Costa del Crime resorts are many of the detached homes of the really big players, who enjoy a view of the Med, a decent pension and having a moan about the young hoods giving the coast a bad reputation. But they have a point; because every now and again there are chilling reminders of just how dangerous southern Spain can be if you upset the wrong people.

In Marbella, in September 2007, gunmen lay in wait as their target parked his Mercedes, before riddling the vehicle with bullets. Two of the passengers were killed immediately; the third died later in hospital. The dead, all Colombians,
were just another statistic among the gangland hits that plague the Costa del Sol. It later emerged that these Colombians were gunned down after swearing revenge on a rival gang and were about to spill blood in their ruthless pursuit of profits for their multi-million-pound cocaine business.

As one old-time villain from London explained to me: ‘Everyone round here knows the Colombians are highly professional and completely ruthless. The only way to stop them is to kill them and that's what happened when those three died. The trouble is it will never scare the Colombians away from Spain because they've got plenty more soldiers where that lot came from.'

So, these days the Costa del Sol is dominated by a new breed of evil, cold-blooded cocaine gangsters, who take no prisoners. They shoot to kill in a way that has even terrified many of the most notorious old-time British hoods. Women, children and so-called ‘civilians' are no longer off limits when it comes to revenge attacks.

‘We're talkin' about everyone from Russians to Swedes. They all want a piece of the cocaine action down here and there are no rules any more. It's a deadly trade now and expect the amount of coke killings to go up and up,' said the same retired British gangster.

Today, there's only a handful of those veteran villains brave enough to still retain a toehold in the Costa del Sol's lethal cocaine business.

Driving along in his high-powered sports car just outside Puerto Banus, near Marbella, Ronnie – a veteran trafficker from south London – explains how it's the smugglers who make the most money out of cocaine because its journey from South America is more closely monitored by authorities than ever before. Ronnie reckons he takes the biggest risks, especially when shifting large quantities of cocaine. These days, increasing amounts of it come up from West Africa through the ‘hashlands' of Morocco, where Colombian coke barons often store their product without any apparent interference from Moroccan authorities.

Back in the late 1970s, Ronnie served a lengthy term in prison for his role in one of Britain's biggest ever armed robberies. After doing his time he was given a one-way plane ticket to Spain by a friend and switched careers from armed robbery to cocaine trafficking. Since then, Ronnie has lost
three of his best friends to hitmen, after they fell out with the Colombians and Mexicans who control the flow of cocaine circulating the world looking for wealthy buyers. Ronnie considers himself a lucky man to still be alive.

‘I've seen some right monsters come and go in this game. It's vicious out there. The trouble is there ain't no respect no more. The money is huge but so are the risks. In some ways I wish coke didn't exist and I was still sticking up banks in south London. It was a lot easier back then. You split the money up with yer team and you either stayed on yer toes or you got nicked and served a bit of bird. Either way you was a lot safer than you are today.'

Ronnie admits that handling cocaine was the only decent ‘job' he could get when he arrived on the Costa del Sol. ‘Sure, I started with a bit of puff but that's even more aggro 'cos it takes up so much fuckin' room compared to the white stuff.'

But Ronnie wasn't the only villain in southern Spain with plans to make millions from the coke trade. ‘That's the problem. Everybody wants a pools win out of it. A lot of the young hoods coming in these days are trigger happy, coked-up kids with no consideration for others or their reputations.'

Ronnie reckons he was lucky to get into the ‘coke game' in the late 1980s. ‘Back then it was a much smaller, more tightly knit business. You dealt with one Spanish handler. You never saw the fuckin' South Americans and your £50,000 investment was turned into £200,000 in a matter of days. It
was as sweet as a nut and no one got too greedy, if you know what I mean.'

Back in those days, lorries, vans and even cars were used by smugglers to transport cocaine up through Spain into France and then across the Channel. ‘We hardly ever got stopped. For about six or seven years it was like printing money. It was that easy,' says Ronnie.

But then, says Ronnie, a lot of ‘scuzzy villains' started trying to get in on the cocaine trade in southern Spain. ‘That's when the aggro really started,' he recalled. ‘We had certain rules back then but they got thrown out the window. Soon the type of shooter you was carrying was more important than the quality of your product. Not good.'

At one stage in the mid-1990s, Ronnie claims he had to ‘do' a couple of smalltime dealers on his manor near Puerto Banus, who were trying to muscle in on his coke trafficking business. ‘Stupid bastards tried to undercut my trafficking fees. I warned them to go away but they underestimated the strength in depth of my team.'

Ronnie declined to say if those smalltime smugglers were still alive today.

‘Let's just say I never saw 'em again.'

Ronnie then deftly changes the subject by explaining to me how the coke travels from South America through the European hub of Rotterdam in Holland or via West Africa, where Colombians have started turning some poverty-stricken nations into their personal cocaine fiefdoms.

‘Back in the old days I got on fine with the Colombians and Mexicans but these days they tend to stay in the shadows. Mind you, we're all a bit paranoid about police listening devices and stuff like that. It's a Big Brother society we live in today, which means it's quite tricky to make phone calls or write emails without someone, somewhere monitoring what you're up to.'

Ronnie has nothing but praise for the Colombians, though. ‘They are polite, superbly well organised and extremely tough but they are decent, if you don't upset 'em. In the old days you knew they wouldn't rip you off as long as you didn't rip them off, which is fair enough.

‘I'm not surprised they've started to use West Africa as a shipment point now, though. It's been on the cards for years. Those countries need money from anyone and the Colombians know how to spread it all around and get full loyalty from the locals. They are past masters at it.'

But Ronnie's main priority is the ‘coke business' he runs from southern Spain. ‘Thank gawd the white stuff is still in demand. That's part of the reason why this part of Spain remains an important stopping-off point for shipments of coke whatever route it takes to get into Europe.'

Ronnie reckons it's unlikely he will retire ‘until the day I die'.

‘I like what I do and I consider myself to be the top professional. I'm a bit of workaholic I suppose. A lot of my mates from back in south London are the same. We like to earn money, not just to spend it but to feel we're providing for
our families. I guess that attitude was ingrained into us by our fathers.

‘I know I'm pushing my luck by staying here so long in this game but I can't let go of the buzz, the excitement, that feeling you get when you pull off a half-decent deal. It's indescribable. It's like you're on top of the world and you're lookin' down at all those ordinary folk who earn in ten years what you just made in one cocaine deal.

‘It's a fuck sight better than takin' drugs, me old son!'

After word got out that I was working on a book that delved into the cocaine underworld of southern Spain, I was granted an audience with one of the most feared British gangsters of all time, who's resided on the Costa del Sol for nearly thirty years.

We'll call him Stan and I've had to change a few of the details about his back story to prevent many criminals involved in this area's vicious cocaine wars from knowing precisely who I am talking about. Stan is a member of one of the UK's most famous criminal families and he said he wanted to ‘get a few things straight' for my book.

Stan might have been in his mid-sixties but he stood ramrod straight and spoke with a soft voice that seemed to underline his hardness in a twisted, chilling fashion. He wasn't big by any means but he had the darkest eyes I have ever seen. They were matt black, with not a sparkle of emotion in them.

Stan said he'd ‘done business' with all the main cocaine players on the Costa del Crime and I suspected he continued to operate with impunity along the entire coastline. Yet he seemed charming and relaxed as we spoke in a Spanish restaurant situated far away from the usual criminal haunts. Earlier he'd rolled into the car park driving a brand new Spanish registered Range Rover.

‘I don't like those hooker joints full of coked-up villains,' Stan told me. ‘I appreciate Spain for what it really is: a wonderful, diverse place full of easy-going pleasant people who enjoy a rich, good lifestyle compared to all the miserable sods back in Blighty.'