Sex is a multibillion-dollar industry in Spain, with colorfully lit brothels staffed mainly by poor immigrant women from Latin America, Africa and eastern Europe lining highways throughout the country

Pimps Arrested in Spain for 'Barcoding' Women

Police in Spain arrested 22 alleged pimps who purportedly tattooed women with bar codes as a sign of ownership and used violence to force them into prostitution.  Police are calling the gang the "bar code pimps." Officers freed one 19-year-old woman who had been beaten, held against her will and tattooed with a bar code and an amount of money — €2,000 ($2,650) — which investigators believe was the debt the gang wished to extort before releasing her. The woman had also been whipped, chained to a radiator and had her hair and eyebrows shaved off, according to an Interior Ministry statement.All those arrested were of Romanian nationality and had forced the women to hand over part of their earnings, the statement said. The women were tattooed on their wrists if they tried to escape, the statement said. Police also seized guns and ammunition. It was not immediately clear when the raids took place. Police seized €140,000 ($185,388) in cash, which had been hidden in a false ceiling, a large amount of gold jewelry and five vehicles, three of which were described as luxury cars. The gang was made up of two separate groups, referred to as "clans" in the statement, each dedicated to controlling prostitution along fixed stretches of a street in downtown Madrid. One of the alleged ringleaders who was identified only by the initials "I.T." is wanted by authorities in Romania for crimes linked to prostitution, the statement said. The women were controlled at all times to ensure "money was taken off them immediately," the statement said.   Sex is a multibillion-dollar industry in Spain, with colorfully lit brothels staffed mainly by poor immigrant women from Latin America, Africa and eastern Europe lining highways throughout the country. Prostitution falls in legal limbo: it is not regulated, although pimping is a crime. The northeastern city of Barcelona plans to introduce regional legislation in coming weeks banning prostitution on urban streets.

Russian banker shot six times had testified over murder plot

The banker was left for dead by a lone gunman as he returned to his home in Canary Wharf on Tuesday evening. Scotland Yard detectives are investigating the attempted assassination, which Mr Gorbuntsov’s lawyer believes was a retaliation attack after the banker gave evidence in a 2009 attempted murder case. Mr Gorbuntsov, who fled to London because of his fear of reprisals, had recently submitted new evidence to Russian police about the attempted murder of Alexander Antonov, another Russian banker. The case was closed three years ago when three Chechen men were jailed for attempted murder. But police have never discovered who organised the attempted hit. Officers re-opened the case on March 2 this year after Mr Gorbuntsov submitted his new testimony.

Serbian mafia 'put gangster in mincer and ate him for lunch'

Gang that assassinated Serbian prime minister admits making 'face mask' out of member's skin

A GANGSTER who helped orchestrate the Serbian prime minister's assassination in 2003 was allegedly made into a stew and eaten by his associates after falling out with his gang leader.
 
Police believe Milan Jurisic (above) was beaten to death with a hammer, skinned and boned with a sharp knife and then put through a meat grinder at a flat in Madrid in 2009.
 
The Zemun clan, a notorious faction of the Serbian mafia that once had connections with the Serbian government, police and media, allegedly made a face mask from Jurisic's skin before turning him into stew and eating him for lunch.
 
It apparently took the gang five days to clean up what is being described as "the house of horrors".
 
Sretko Kalinic, nicknamed 'The Butcher' and known as the gang's hitman, confessed to the crimes when he was arrested in Croatia last year, according to the Daily Mail. Kalinic admitted that he "literally dismembered" Jurisic and then threw his remains into Madrid's Manzanares river.
 
This week, Spanish officers discovered documents at the scene of the crime supporting The Butcher's account. They also found 50 bones in the river and are currently awaiting identification from forensics.
 
Jurisic was one of 12 men found guilty of arranging the 2003 murder of Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, who was killed by a sniper as he approached a government building in Belgrade.
 
Jurisic was on the run when he was murdered, having been convicted in his absence to 30 years' jail by the Belgrade Special Court for Organised Crime.

It is believed Jurisic had fallen out with the leader of the Zemun cklan, Luka Bojovic, either over money or a woman.
 
As the BBC reports, Bojovic himself was arrested in a restaurant in Valencia, Spain last month, wanted for more than 20 murders in Serbia, the Netherlands and Spain. He is also suspected of involvement in the 2003 assassination. · 

Spain moves toward freedom of information law

Freedom of information in Spain came one step nearer Friday after the recently-elected government agreed to introduce a bill in response to widespread disgust over corruption and mismanagement by elected officials of both main political parties. The country's Cabinet agreed to put forward legislation that will allow Spaniards to find out more about how their money is spent by government. Spain, which is struggling to get its public finances under control, is one of Europe's few countries without wide-ranging freedom of information legislation. "It is a law whose main goal is improve the credibility of and trust in our institutions, especially government ones," Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria said. The legislation will take months to come into effect, after an unprecedented 15-day period in which the general public can make suggestions on what should be accessible to them and how the law should work. After that, the bill has to be go through normal Parliamentary procedures. Though the salaries of the prime minister and government ministers are already public information, as are the national budget and much other money-related data, not all of it is easy to access. But under the new bill, information on subjects including senior public servants' salaries and detailed data on government contracts and subsidies will be published online. Spaniards will also be able to file requests for other kinds of information providing it does not breach national security or personal privacy. The goal of the new law is to make public officials at all levels much more accountable for how they spend taxpayer money. People will be able to get information just by the click of a mouse. "It is a law that tries to give rigor to compliance with budget and financial obligations that were unknown until now, but will serve to restore credibility to all levels of government," Saenz de Santa Maria said. News of the Cabinet's support for a package that should make for more open government comes as the country struggles to avoid the same fate as other indebted European countries. The newly-elected conservative government is trying to convince investors that it has a strategy to deal with its debts so it won't follow Greece, Ireland and Portugal in needing a bailout. Concerns have swelled recently after figures showed the country's borrowing last year was way more than expected, due in large part to overspending by regional governments but also because the economy is shrinking and laying siege to tax revenues. And a new code of good governance included in the law will make it easier to fire government officials — and ban them from serving anew for up to 10 years — if they do things such as fail to set or meet deficit-reduction targets under a balanced budget law, planned for 2020.

Spain's Iberia starts low-cost airline

Spanish carrier Iberia on Friday launched a new low-cost airline, Iberia Express, which aims to claim a stake in the highly competitive no-frills sector of the European market. The new airline is part of a plan by parent company International Consolidated Airlines Group to increase profitability after the merger of its component parts, British Airways and Iberia. Iberia Express will initially cover Vigo, Santiago and Granada on Spain's mainland and its island destinations of Minorca, Ibiza, Fuerteventura, Lanzarote and La Palma. It will expand internationally to Ireland, Italy, Greece, Latvia and Netherlands, chief executive Luis Gallego said at a news conference. "The containment of costs will allow Iberia Express to grow and compete with the low-cost operators," said Gallego, adding that although the new airline will be managed independently, it will employ Iberia's maintenance and other services. Inaugural flights will take off Sunday, although the company's website was not up and running Friday afternoon. Prices begin at (euro) 25 ($33) one-way with a surcharge for checking in luggage and booking seats in advance. The new company employs 500 staff and has a fleet of four Airbus 320 planes, although there are plans to increase this to 14 aircraft by the end of the year and up 40 by 2015. The airline is the subject of a protracted labor dispute between Iberia Lineas Aereas de Espana SA and Spain's main pilots' union, Sepla — which held 12 days of work stoppages in December and January to protest the low-cost airline. Sepla pilots argue Iberia Express would mean job losses among the 1,600 pilots who work for the main airline — a claim disputed by Iberia. Sepla had announced nine days of strikes in April and May but called them off following government mediation and has agreed to negotiate further with Iberia.

Russian banker shooting: 'It looks like a contract hit'

A former Russian banker is in a critical condition in hospital after he was shot several times in east London. German Gorbuntsov was shot by a man armed with a sub-machine gun as he entered a block of flats in Byng Street, Isle of Dogs, on Tuesday. Aleksander Nekrassov, a former Kremlin advisor, told the BBC that Mr Gorbuntsov was a "key witness" in the case of a murder attempt on another Russian banker, Alexander Antonov, in Moscow in 2009. He said: "It looks like a contract hit to be honest because a sub-machine gun is not really a weapon that would be used by some amateur"

Arrests over child prostitution network selling girls as young as 11

 

The suspects were held this morning as part of a child exploitation investigation into the cases of 24 girls aged between 11 and 16 in Oxford. The men - aged between 21 and 37 - are now being questioned on suspicion of a string of offences including causing the prostitution of young girls, trafficking, grooming and rape. They are being held in custody at an undisclosed police station. The alleged offending is believed to span more than a six-year period. Detective Superintendent Rob Mason, of Thames Valley Police, said: ''We believe we have uncovered an organised crime group who have been running a business of selling young girls for sex.

France siege gunman 'is dead'

 

The man suspected of killing seven people in al-Qaida-linked attacks in France is dead, the French interior minister said today. The suspect died after jumping from his apartment window after police stormed his apartment following a 32 hour standoff.  Claude Gueant says the suspect, who claims links to al-Qa'ida, jumped after police entered the apartment and found him holed up in the bathroom. Police and the suspect exchanged fire before Mohamed Merah died.  Gueant says two policemen were injured.

Two police officers were injured in a shoot-out in Toulouse on Wednesday with a gunman claiming links to al Qaeda

Two police officers were injured in a shoot-out in Toulouse on Wednesday with a gunman claiming links to al Qaeda and who is believed to responsible for the killing of four people at a Jewish school and three soldiers in southwest France. Interior Minister Claude Gueant said that the 24-year-old man had made several visits to Afghanistan and Pakistan and had said that he was acting out of revenge for France’s military involvement overseas. “He claims to be a mujahideen and to belong to al Qaeda,” Gueant told journalists at the scene of the siege. “He wanted revenge for the Palestinian children and he also wanted to take revenge on the French army because of its foreign interventions,” Gueant said. Heavily armed police in bullet-proof vests and helmets cordoned off the residential area where the raid was taking place, in a suburb a few kilometres from the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school where Monday’s shootings took place. Reuters witnesses at the scene heard several shots at about 04:40 a.m. British time. Gueant said that police were also talking to the brother of the gunman, who is a French citizen from Toulouse. Police sources told Reuters that a man had been arrested earlier on Wednesday at a separate location in connection with the killings. The gunman’s mother had also been brought to the scene of the siege in a northern suburb of Toulouse to help with negotiations, Gueant said. “Negotiations with the suspect are ongoing, gunfire has been exchanged,” the minister said. He said that France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy had been informed of the situation at 03:00 a.m. (02:00 a.m. British time), when the raid began. Authorities believe that the gunman in Monday’s school shooting is the same person responsible for killing three soldiers of North African origin in two shootings last week in Toulouse and the nearby town of Montauban. The same Colt 45 handgun was used in all three attacks and in each case the gunman arrived on a Yamaha scooter with his face hidden by a motorcycle helmet. The killings come just five weeks before the first round of France’s presidential elections in which immigration and Islam have been major themes as Sarkozy seeks to win over voters from far-right leader Marine Le Pen.

At least four people, including three children, were killed, when a man on a scooter opened fire outside a Jewish school in Toulouse in southwestern France

At least four people, including three children, were killed, when a man on a scooter opened fire outside a Jewish school in Toulouse in southwestern France on Monday, officials said. The attack also left several injured, two of them seriously, and followed the killing of three soldiers in two separate shootings in the same region last week by a man who escaped on a scooter. BFM TV news channel said that the gun used in the attack at the Ozar Hatorah school was of the same calibre as that used in the soldiers’ shootings, but a spokesman for the interior ministry could not immediately confirm this. President Nicolas Sarkozy cancelled other appointments and was on his way to Toulouse on Monday morning, accompanied by Education Minister Luc Chatel and the president of the CRIF French Jewish association, Richard Prasquier. “I saw two people dead in front of the school, an adult and a child … Inside, it was a vision of horror, the bodies of two small children,” a distraught father whose child attends the school told RTL radio. “I did not find my son, apparently he fled when he saw what happened. How can they attack something as sacred as a school, attack children only sixty centimetres tall?” Several other people were injured, two of them seriously. A rabbi at the school, identified as Rahamim Sabag, told Israel’s channel two television that the dead were a 30-year old rabbi who taught at the school, the rabbi’s five-year-old son and two eight-year old children, one of them the daughter of the school’s principal. A spokesman for Israel’s foreign ministry, Yigal Palmor, expressed outrage at the killings: “We are following with great shock reports coming from Toulouse and we trust the French authorities will solve this crime and bring those responsible to justice.” A spokesman for the interior ministry said that security was being tightened at all Jewish schools in the country. About 50 investigators are already looking into the killings of two soldiers on Thursday in the town of Montauban, close to Toulouse, as they tried to withdraw money from a cash machine close to the barracks of the 17th parachute regiment. A third soldier was killed the previous weekend in Toulouse. Investigators had already confirmed on Friday that the same weapon had been used in both incidents.

Spain's Unicaja, Caja Espana savings banks merge

Spanish regional savings banks Unicaja and Caja Espana have merged following the government's recent requirement that banks raise substantially their provisions set aside to cover toxic real estate exposure. The merger, in which Banco Caja Espana-Duero (Banco Ceiss) is effectively absorbed into Unicaja Banco, creates a group with approximately (EURO)80 billion ($104.9 billion) in total assets and a turnover of (EURO)120 billion ($157.4 billion), according to a joint statement released late Friday. The deal must first receive Finance Ministry and central bank approval and would require (EURO)850 million ($1114.86 million) of state aid, which is added to (EURO)525 million ($688.59 million) already injected into Caja Espana in 2010 by the Bank of Spain's restructuring fund (FROB).

German taxpayer would be obliged to subsidise the wages of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.

 

When faced with the prospect of the Spanish government waiving the collective €752m debt the nation's football clubs owe to the country's tax authorities, the reaction in Europe last week was one of outrage. The German tabloid Bild even asked how long the German taxpayer would be obliged to subsidise the wages of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. What they meant was that while the European Union members bailed out the Spanish economy, successful Spanish clubs were failing to meet their own tax obligations. Strictly speaking, Real Madrid have no tax debt among the €170m debt that the club carry, but Barcelona owe €48m of their overall €364m debt to the Spanish taxman. Uli Hoeness, the outspoken president of Bayern Munich, got to the point rather more quickly when asked about the proposal to excuse Spanish clubs their tax debt. "This is unthinkable," he said. "We pay them hundreds of millions to get them out the shit and then the clubs don't pay their debts." It is a uniquely modern European dilemma, encompassing EU bail-out funds and the competitiveness of the continent's respective leading clubs, all of which ultimately adds another fiendishly complex element to the concept of Financial Fair Play, as proposed by Uefa president Michel Platini. It is further proof that while Spanish football is undoubtedly top dog in Europe, with five teams in the quarter-finals of the two Uefa competitions, it is not without problems. As The Independent's Pete Jenson reported in these pages on Saturday, a government report in Spain last week disclosed that the equivalent of £625m is owed by Spanish clubs to the country's public purse, with £353m of that due from 14 of the 20 clubs in the top division. This is not money owed to banks, investors or owners. It is owed to the Spanish people. On a sporting level it is "financial doping" at its very worse. On a social level it is nothing short of a disgrace in a country where youth unemployment currently runs at 50 per cent. Not all top Spanish clubs are culpable and it was reassuring to read in the breakdown of club debt by AS newspaper that Athletic Bilbao, the team of largely home-grown Basque stars who left English football spellbound with their schooling of Manchester United last week, do not owe the taxman a cent. So too Real Sociedad, Getafe, Villarreal and Sporting Gijon. On the other hand, Atletico Madrid, currently eighth in La Liga and drawn against Hannover 96 in the quarter-finals of the Europa League, owe the Spanish public purse €155m (£128m), more than any other club. The money from the €50m sale of Sergio Aguero to Manchester City last summer went straight to the tax authorities. Valencia, who play AZ Alkmaar in the same stage of the competition, owe €6m in unpaid tax. When Hoeness expressed German football's bitterness that their government is, indirectly, subsidising the success of Spanish clubs it is the likes of Hannover he was talking about. Atletico's big signing was Falcao from Porto last summer, a £33m signing financed by third-party ownership deals. Hannover bought Mame Biram Diouf from Manchester United. Enough said. No one would pretend that British football is the perfect financial model, especially given Rangers' and Portsmouth's debts to HMRC. Even the Germans have had their problems with Borussia Dortmund and Schalke. But unpaid taxes at a time when public services are being cut and jobs lost are particularly repugnant. Real Betis, Real Zaragoza, Racing Santander, Levante and Mallorca (denied a place in last season's Europa League because of their finances) owe a total of €118m to the Spanish tax authorities between them. There are also suggestions that unpaid social security contributions by some Spanish clubs rival those eye-watering figures for unpaid tax. In the past, Spanish football has been protected by the assumption that punishing badly-run clubs would cause such a backlash against government by voters that it would not be politically expedient. There is no points penalty in Spain for going into the equivalent of financial administration as there is in England. But attitudes are changing. The governing political group Partido Popular has described the situation as "intolerable". The government was forced to disclose the figures of unpaid tax because of an official request by Caridad Garcia of the Izquierda Unida (IU) party. A spokesman for IU, José Luis Centella, made the connection last week between the financial hardship felt by the Spanish people and the clubs' failure to pay. "This is bad news for all the people who have lost homes and suffered from the cutbacks while there is this tremendous generosity towards football." Wisely, the Spanish sports minister Miguel Cardenal announced last week that the government had dropped any consideration of giving football clubs a clean slate on their tax debts. There has even been a call from the centre-left party PSOE to ban clubs with tax debts from competing in the league, a rule that, already in place in Italian football, would change the face of La Liga overnight. Were the Spanish tax authorities to call in their debts tomorrow, Barcelona would surely be able to find, or borrow, the €48m they owe. Atletico, on the other hand, would find themselves in the kind of dire situation currently enveloping Rangers. There is a lesson for English football that in the risky game of investment and borrowing that most clubs enter as they attempt to fulfil the ambitions of supporters and owners, there are certain obligations that are non-negotiable. Football clubs command such loyalty and affection that they are too often cut slack, but, as the situation in Spain is starting to show, there is always a limit. Ridicule of Richards the last straw Down the years, Sir Dave Richards has given every appearance of being invulnerable to criticism or error of judgement. He has survived adversaries in the Football Association such as Lord Triesman and Ian Watmore in recent years. The financial problems of Sheffield Wednesday, where he was chairman, do not seem to have had an impact on his reputation. He walked out on the 2018 World Cup bid in a huff and it all blew over. Which makes it all the more incredible that an ornamental fountain, and a slightly unhinged but largely irrelevant speech on football, should prove his undoing. It just goes to shows that a divisive figure in football administration can survive a great deal but once their mistakes start to make people laugh – it's over. Will City seize their chance to get Mourinho? When Manchester City meet Chelsea on Wednesday, the shadow of one man falls over both clubs. Jose Mourinho is the last card that the most ambitious football club owners can play. If all else fails, then give Mourinho the job and if that does not bring success then you really are out of options. In Spain, the mood is that Mourinho may stay at Real Madrid in the penultimate year of his contract next season or he may go back to England if the right job presents itself. Is that Chelsea or could it be City? If Roberto Mancini fails to win the title this season and Mourinho is willing to come then it places an idea in the heads of City's owners. It is not as if he is available every summer.

S SPAIN THE NEXT GREECE? NATION SINKS FURTHER INTO MIRE

Savage cuts to the Greek health service have seen the country's HIV and Tuberculosis rates soar - sparking fears it is becoming a third world nation.

Aid agencies said the cutting of hospital budgets by an astonishing 40 per cent had also led to a sharp rise in the number of citizens being diagnosed with Malaria.

In the south, they said, it is reaching near endemic levels not seen since 1970s.

The scrapping of needle exchange services has seen the number of HIV and Aids sufferers in central Athens rise by 1,250 per cent in 2011 alone.

There are more prostitutes on the streets selling their bodies to make ends meet, while heroin addicts are finding it harder to come by anti-retroviral treatments.

There is also the first instances ever of the two illnesses being transmitted between mother and child - something usually equated with sub-Saharan Africa and not Europe.

Médecins sans Frontières Greece's Reveka Papadopoulos said the health service cuts, which saw widespread job losses, were putting social services 'under very severe strain'.

She added: 'If not in a state of breakdown. What we are seeing are very clear indicators of a system that cannot cope'. She said the 40 per cent cuts were on top of a 24 per cent increase in 2011 in demand for medical services.

This, she said, was 'largely because people could simply no longer afford private healthcare. The entire system is deteriorating'.

On the rise: The number of HIV and Aids sufferers in Greece is soaring

 

She added: 'There has also been a sharp increase in cases of tuberculosis in the immigrant population.

'Cases of Nile fever - leading to 35 deaths in 2010 - and the reappearance of endemic malaria in several parts of Greece.

 

 

 

'The simple fact of the reappearance of malaria, with 100-odd cases in southern Greece last year and 20 to 30 more elsewhere, shows barriers to healthcare access have risen.

'Malaria is treatable, it shouldn't spread if the system is working.'

Good news: Greece is set to receive the next tranche of eurozone bailout cash next week

The news comes as it was revealed Greece will get €5.9billion in new bailout money on Monday. It is the first slice of a new rescue package meant to keep the country afloat while it overhauls its economy.

Greece stands to receive a total of €172.7 billion from its partners in the 17-nation eurozone and the International Monetary Fund until 2016.

IS SPAIN THE NEXT GREECE? NATION SINKS FURTHER INTO MIRE

Spain now owes more money than it has done in the last 20 years, the Bank of Spain said.

For 2011 the country's public debt was 68.5 percent of gross domestic product, up from 61.2 per cent in 2010.

While it is a relatively low ratio, compared with its 16 eurozone peers who have an average 87.7 per cent, it has almost doubled from 36.3 per cent in 2007.

This is because there is a lack of economic impetus since the credit-and-construction bubble burst in 2008.

Spain has been ordered by the European Commission to cut its budget shortfall from 8.5 per cent of GDP in 2011 to 5.3 per cent this year and 3 per cent in 2013.

It has forced Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy to hunt for savings worth around €60billion.

This year's target is a compromise after Rajoy defied Brussels by ditching a much tighter goal of 4.4 per cent of GDP agreed by the previous government.     

But the task will be made tougher as the economy is thought to already be in its second recession in three years, with the government expecting output to shrink 1.7 per cent in 2012.

The cuts has led to the closure of 27 publicly run companies, some of which were duplicates - such as a water company.

Others included a loss-making entity tasked with stimulating Spain's small housing rental market and one created to back the Barcelona Olympics in 1992.    

The central bank also said Spain's 17 autonomous regions, blamed for the lion's share of the fiscal slippage last year, ran debt up by 17.3 per cent in 2011 to €140billion.

The data showed the country's wealthiest region of Catalonia, was the most indebted, closely followed by Valencia.  Both had debt-to-GDP ratios of around 20 per cent compared to an average of 13.1 per cent.    

Tighter controls over regional budgets imposed by the central government aim to bring their spending back under control this year, even if analysts retain doubts over their future compliance and banks' balance sheets.    

The sum includes money left over from the country's first rescue package and a new €130billion programme.

The disbursement was approved earlier this week, said Matthias Mors, the European Commission representative to the troika - the debt inspectors from the European Union, the European Central Bank and the IMF who are managing the Greek bailout.

The bailout, on its own, will not be enough to ease the country's financial woes.

An EU report released today said Greece must make a sustained effort to attract future investment and support export-led growth as it seeks to recover from a recession that is now in its fifth year.

But the report, prepared by the European Commission and the ECB, also said a bond swap deal with private creditors has made the country's debt load far more sustainable in the long-term.

The news has had a positive effect on European financial markets.

The FTSE 100 is today 0.45 per cent up at 5,967.43; France's CAC 40 is 0.54 per cent up at 3,599.37; and Germany's DAX is 0.33 per cent up at 7,168.37.

The report projects that, assuming interim targets are met, Greece's debt-to-GDP ratio will decline to below 117 per cent in 2020 and to below 90 per cent in 2030.

It was as high as 160 per cent of GDP before the debt relief deal was agreed with private creditors.

While progress has been made in reforming the economy, significant concerns remain, including inflation, a lack of credit available to households and business, and the need to regain competitiveness by reducing labor costs, Mors said.

'One of the priorities of this second program is the recapitalization of banks,' Mors said.

For one thing, bank deposits have fallen, he said. For another, the agreement to write down private debt 'will leave holes in the balance sheets of banks, because they held government bonds,' he added.

He said the new program includes €50 billion for bank recapitalisation. 'This is an enormous amount,' he said. Mors also warned that significant more belt-tightening lies ahead.

'The target for this year is a primary deficit of 1 per cent,' he said, referring to the budget balance before interest payments. 

'And the programme target for 2014 is a surplus of 4.5 per cent. And therefore people have to be aware that, in terms of fiscal adjustment, there's still a long way to go.' He said the Greek government will have to identify before this summer how it plans to close that gap.

Premier League footballer Fabrice Muamba is in intensive care after collapsing during an FA Cup tie.

 

 The 23-year-old was said to be critically ill in the London Chest Hospital after falling to the ground at White Hart Lane in front of millions of television viewers watching the sixth round tie between Tottenham Hotspur and his club, Bolton Wanderers. Outside the hospital, the club's manager Owen Coyle said the following 24 hours were "absolutely crucial" and urged people to pray for the player's recovery. A Bolton spokesman said: "Bolton Wanderers can confirm that Fabrice Muamba has been admitted to the heart attack centre at London Chest Hospital where he is currently in a critically ill condition in intensive care. No further information will be issued at this stage. The club has requested the media to respect his family's privacy at this time." A packed White Hart Lane looked on with a worldwide audience watching live coverage on ESPN as the Trotters midfielder suddenly fell to the floor. Confusion turned to horror as medics sprinted on to the pitch to begin resuscitating the young man. Players looked shocked and watched in disbelief as the former England Under 21 star was treated with a defibrillator for several minutes before being stretchered off wearing an oxygen mask and taken to hospital. World Cup referee Howard Webb abandoned the game. As the message was relayed around the stadium with the score at 1-1, the fans applauded and chanted Muamba's name. Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore said: "The thoughts of the Premier League, its clubs and players are with Fabrice Muamba, his family and Bolton Wanderers. We would like to praise the players, match officials, coaching staff and medical teams of both clubs at White Hart Lane for their swift actions in attending Fabrice. "The league would also like to commend the compassion shown by the fans of Bolton Wanderers and Tottenham Hotspur. We hope to hear positive news about Fabrice who is and has been a wonderful ambassador for the English game and the league at Arsenal, Birmingham City and Bolton Wanderers." Manchester United star Rio Ferdinand wrote on Twitter: "Come on Fabrice Muamba, praying for you." England striker Wayne Rooney wrote: "Hope fabrice muamba is ok. Praying for him and his family. Still in shock." Muamba's team-mate Stuart Holden, added: "Still praying for Fab, the guy is a fighter on and off the field. We love you bro."

Families in Spain face eviction over stranger loans

 

Fighting eviction for failing to pay the mortgage on his home in Spain's capital, Nelson Castillo is now grappling not only with his own debts but also those of a family he does not know. The 39-year-old and his wife acted as guarantors of another Ecuadoran family's loan under a programme run by an agency that negotiated loans for immigrants. In return, that family acted as the guarantor for Castillo's loan. Now, both families are in arrears. And each of them is legally responsible for its own loan and for the loan it guaranteed. "We were two families and we did not know each other. Ecuadorans are like that. We had to sign the papers and that's it. Goodbye, and each side went its own way," said Castillo. Dozens of anti-eviction activists had gathered outside his Madrid apartment building on Tuesday to prevent court clerks and bank officials from ejecting Castillo and his family from their home. Inside the apartment a volunteer psychologist tried to comfort Castillo's wife, 40-year-old Kelly Herrera, who sat in distress on the couch while the couple talked to police. The couple were given until March 30 to pay their debt of 222,000 euros ($291,000) claimed by the bank. And they are still liable for the loan given to the other family. "Today they are demanding my loan. But later on they will demand the second," said Castillo. The couple's lawyer Rafael Mayoral had requested that the eviction be blocked for "humanitarian reasons" because their two children are minors and a knee injury prevents Herrera from working at the moment. But above all the lawyer argued that the couple are "victims of a swindle". The couple and nine other families are suing an agency, Central Hipotecaria del Inmigrante, which ran a system of "cross guarantors" for loans among people that did not always know each other. "It was a pyramid scheme of financial risk management," said Mayoral. Despite the investigation under way into the agency, the courts have refused to issue a moratorium on evictions. Last week the government approved a voluntary "code of conduct" for banks that aims to help poor homeowners settle their debts and reduce a wave of evictions brought on by Spain's economic crisis. For families whose members are all out of work and have no other source of income, the code obliges signatory banks to restructure their mortgage debt by for example lengthening the term of the loan or reducing its interest rate. The goal is to reduce the number of evictions in Spain, which amount to about 300,000 since the collapse of a property bubble in 2008. But the new code will not help Castillo and his family. "The bank did not give me any option, I wanted to give them the apartment in exchange for clearing my debt but they were not interested," he said. Castillo, a waiter, said with pride that he "only spent a few months out of work" since he moved to Spain in 1996. In 2006 he and his wife decided to buy an apartment while Spain was still in the midst of a property boom. The couple took out a mortgage with a variable rate that started out with a monthly payment of 900 euros. But as Euribor interest rates rose, their monthly mortgage payment shot up to 1,420 euros. "It became impossible to pay. I earned 1,000 euros a month and my wife also did not earn much. Things became complicated. I tried to reach an agreement with the bank but it was not possible. I stopped paying," said Castillo. Castillo said he did not know if the family which signed as the guarantor of his loan has suffered any consequences because he stopped making his mortgage payments. "I only met them the day we signed the papers," he said.

Troubled Spain, Portugal now desperate for rain

 

Fernando Luna, a burly Spanish farmer, yanks a barley sprout from a field as dry as powder. He examines its roots, which are mostly dead, then tosses the stunted shoot away in disgust. "Worthless! This is worthless!" Luna shouts. Spain is facing its driest winter in more than 70 years and bailed-out Portugal next door is in similar straits. Thousands of jobs and many millions in agricultural output are in jeopardy. Both nations are desperately short of so much: tax revenues, bank credit, jobs, hope for the future. Now, it won't even rain. The landscape in northern Spain is now a palette in shades of ugly. Pale brown fields without crops or pasture stretch off into the distance. A pond for watering sheep has shriveled into a dustbowl. An irrigation canal down the road holds only stagnant water, murky from so much sediment and so little flow. Luna waves this way and that, distraught over fields he says are doomed to yield zero harvest. He has given up his winter crop for lost. "Imagine, the color of vinegar! They should be green, green, green," he says of the barley fields that lack shoots. Stalks should be reaching halfway up the shin at this point. Spain got less than 30 percent of its normal precipitation from December through February. There is a slim window of 10 days or so for it to rain and help farmers like Luna salvage at least part of their winter crops of wheat, barley and oats. And not all regions are as bad off as Huesca, a northern province where the Pyrenees lie and where Luna is president of a chapter of the ASAJA farmers association. But the March weather forecast is not good for farmers — just more blue skies, says Fermin Elizaga of the national weather service. "Out in the countryside, the situation is probably going to get worse," he says. A key concern is how full Spain's reservoirs will be for watering the lucrative fruit and vegetable crops that are the pride and joy of the country's euro40 billion ($52 billion) agriculture and livestock industry. Nationwide, reservoirs are at an average 62 percent of capacity — not that bad — but in Huesca they are just 20 percent. That means farmers get only 20 percent of the water they are normally allotted for irrigation and will have to leave much of their land idle. ASAJA estimates this will cost Huesca province around euro1.3 billion ($1.7 billion) in lost revenue from drastically smaller harvests of peaches, cherries, almonds and grapes. In a good year, 6,000 people work in the Huesca harvest and another 2,000 in canning, packaging and related services. It could be a lean year for them, as it will be for much of Spain, with its nearly 23 percent jobless rate — the highest in the 17-nation eurozone — and an economy expected to slip into its second recession in three years. In Galicia, Spain's lushly green northwestern corner where it usually rains all the time, pastures have no grass this year. Farmers there and elsewhere are being forced to ship in fodder for sheep and cattle at a cost of euro2 million ($2.6 million) a day, according to ASAJA national spokesman Gregorio Juarez. "They're all burned up," says Juarez. Being so used to plentiful rain, Galicia and other parts of northern Spain have fewer reservoirs, so they are less prepared than the often blazingly hot south, where places like Andalusia and Extremadura on the border with Portugal catch every drop of precious rain. In Huesca, one reservoir built in the 1950s is now so low you can see the ruins of a submerged village, Mediano. At the best of times, the tip of its 16th-century church belltower peeks out of the water and boaters row up and touch it. These days, the water is so low you could walk into the church itself if the front door were not sealed up. In Portugal, Joao Dinis, a spokesman for Portugal's National Farms Confederation, said the drought has added to hardships caused by the country's acute financial crisis, which forced it to ask for a euro78 billion ($102 billion) bailout last year, making credit scarce. Farmers are enduring "a very, very difficult" period, with cereal crops badly hit and grazing land in short supply. "It's the worst situation in living memory," Dinis said. He says Portuguese farmers need emergency aid of euro25 million ($33 million). The Farm Ministry is calculating the damages and negotiating exceptional grants for farmers with the European Union. In Robres, a speck of a village in Huesca, barley farmer Jose Manuel Allue is taking the rare step of watering his crop, grains like wheat and barley that are normally fed by rain alone. And he is blowing his entire irrigation quota in just two days, using 6-foot-high (2-meter) sprinklers to soak a piece of land as big as 40 football fields. The pole-like devices shower water with a pleasant, rhythmic spritzing sound. "After that is gone, it is just a matter of looking to the sky and hoping," Allue said, taking long drags on a strong, thick Spanish cigarette as the earthy smell of a pig farm wafts by. Seconds later, something does appear in the sky, but it's not clouds: three water-dumping fire planes returning from a mission further north. Forest fires — a staple of Spanish summers — have broken out in recent weeks because of the dry conditions, awfully early in the year for such blazes. Ditto for Portugal. Allue checks the weather forecast on the Internet or TV first thing each morning and hears talk of little else at the town tavern, but he has a herd of 1,100 pigs to tide him over if his barley crop proves worthless. Juarez, of ASAJA's Madrid office, says a drought is the last thing Spain needs now on top of its economic distress. He used a Spanish adage that when a stray dog is emaciated and mangy, it probably has other problems too. "For a skinny dog, it's all fleas," he says. Translation: When it rains, it pours.

Spanish House Prices Tumble

 

Spanish house prices tumbled at their fastest pace on record in the fourth quarter, a sign that a long-running property bust will continue to weigh on Spanish households and banks. House prices fall over 11.2% in the fourth-quarter of 2011-the fastest contraction on record. WSJ's Sara Schaefer Munoz has been looking at the data and analyzes how this affects its efforts to deal with its debt crisis. House prices fell on average by 11.2% in the fourth quarter from the same period a year earlier, well below the 7.4% decline in the third quarter, while prices of used homes was down 13.7% in the period, the country's statistics agency INE said Thursday. Both readings are by far the worst since INE started recording countrywide prices in 2007, the peak year for Spain's decade-long property boom. Previously, annual price declines had bottomed out at 7.7% in 2009, and analysts say house prices have only rarely fallen year-to-year since at least the 1970s. The drop indicates Spanish property prices are now correcting at a similar pace to that seen in the U.S. soon after the 2008 financial crisis, and may fall further at least this year. In previous quarters, price drops were somewhat contained, the result of support efforts by the government and banks, fearful of the effect of a housing collapse. Spanish banks hold more than €400 billion ($521.32 billion) worth of loans to the construction and real-estate sector, backed by collateral that loses value as property prices slide further. The amount is equivalent to around 40% of Spain's gross domestic product. TK Raj Badiani, an economist at IHS Global Insight, said government data indicates Spanish house prices are down more than 20% from the 2007-2008 peak, even though other evidence points to a possible drop of more than 30%. "The continued imbalance between the supply and demand of housing suggests that house prices will continue to fall throughout 2012," Mr. Badiani said. "The outlook remains bleak, with the demand for housing expected to shrink throughout 2012 with debt-laden households struggling to cope with a devastated labor market and limited access to credit." Last month, Spain's Finance Minister Luis de Guindos presented a clean-up plan that will force banks to set aside an additional €50 billion this year to cover losses from souring loans, mostly property-related. The plan also seeks to allow a faster correction of the property market this year, so that lower prices trigger some demand in the moribund sector. Earlier this week, INE data showed Spain's property sales continued their recent slide in January, with a 26% annual decline. Last year, just over 361,000 homes were sold in Spain, less than half the number sold in 2007. The clean-up plan and other reforms may only have a delayed effect on the euro zone's fourth-largest economy, the Ernst & Young consultancy said in a report. A lack of demand amid an economic contraction that may stretch until 2014 should keep house prices falling for the next three years, Ernst & Young added. Meanwhile, Spain's bond auction was a mixed bag Thursday, with the Treasury selling slightly less than the maximum targeted amount but paying mostly lower yields to investors. The infusion of cheap cash from the European Central Bank has buttressed bond markets across the 17-nation euro zone, but not always equally. Spain's government bond market hasn't kept pace, while Italy, which at the end of last year had been lumped together with Spain as possibly becoming the "next domino," has swapped places with Spain as the country having to pay less of a premium on its debt. The contrasting fortunes also reflects the market's confidence in Italy's ability to make progress on the fiscal front while Spain falters. Italy's economy is likely to record a primary surplus in 2012. Spain unilaterally revised its budget deficit targets and analysts are skeptical if even those targets will be met.

The former chief reporter of the News of the World was arrested yesterday by police investigating the phone hacking scandal, on suspicion of intimidating a witness.

Neville Thurlbeck, 50, who was also news editor on the defunct Sunday tabloid, was detained by appointment at a central London police station by officers from Operation Weeting a day after his former editor, Rebekah Brooks, was arrested with five others on suspicion of conspiring to pervert the course of justice. He was later released on bail. Yesterday's arrest came as James Murdoch used a letter to the House of Commons media select committee to distance himself once more from any wrongdoing inside News International (NI). He blamed two former trusted lieutenants, Colin Myler and Tom Crone, claiming there were "inconsistencies" in their evidence to MPs. Mr Thurlbeck has been a central figure in the unfolding phone-hacking saga since being named in the so-called "for Neville" email. This showed voicemail interception went beyond a single "rogue" reporter at the NOTW. He was arrested last year on suspicion of conspiring to hack phones and eavesdropping voicemail messages. During recent months, he has adopted a higher media profile, with broadcast appearances and the launch of a blog commenting on developments in the crisis enveloping NI. In a blog entry last week, Mr Thurlbeck revealed how Will Lewis, a key member of News Corp's Management and Standards Committee, which has been marshalling millions of internal NI emails to Scotland Yard, had hired a private security company to provide security at his home. Mr Thurlbeck published the name of the security company, noting that it had spent several hours at Mr Lewis's home, and gave the name of the street where the NI executive lives. In a subsequent blog, Mr Thurlbeck, who is suing his former employer for unfair dismissal, said his story had prompted approaches from lawyers and a public relations company representing Mr Lewis, asking for the removal of his posting. He claimed it was suggested to him that the details he had provided about the security company "somehow implied I had put [Mr Lewis's] home under surveillance. Bonkers!". He added: "I accepted their point that printing the name of his street was distressing to his family and took this down immediately as I have absolutely no wish to do this. Although I have not been asked to do so, I would like to apologise to Mrs Lewis for any distress." A spokesman for the Management and Standards Committee declined to comment last night on Mr Thurlbeck's arrest. Meanwhile Mr Murdoch has sought to influence the parliamentary report into phone hacking, which is expected to be published before the Easter recess, by telling the committee that he did not mislead them, that he never tried to hide wrongdoing at the NOTW, and that when he did ask questions about what was going on, he was given "false assurances" by senior executives at Wapping. In a personal letter to John Whittingdale, chair of the media select committee, the former executive chairman of NI initially takes responsibility "for not uncovering wrongdoing earlier". However, the limited apologetic tone of his seven page letter, in which he accepts that it "would have been better if I had asked more questions", also contains evidence of anger directed at former trusted lieutenants inside NI. He says he relied too much on people who assured him that investigations had been carried out and who claimed that further inquiries were unnecessary. The former NOTW editor, Colin Myler, and News Group Newspaper's former legal manager, Tom Crone, are named repeatedly and described as offering "inconsistencies" to Parliament, while Mr Murdoch says his own evidence "has always been consistent". The letter states: "The truth is that incomplete answers and what now appears to be false assurances were given to the questions that I asked." In summaries of earlier evidence to the committee, he says he was "never intimately involved with the workings of the NOTW"; and on key meetings that discussed how senior executives were dealing with the emerging hacking culture, he says: "I was given a narrower set of facts than I should have been given..." He also says that if "Messrs Crone and Myler" had given him the highly critical private opinion offered in 2008 by NI's leading counsel, Michael Silverleaf QC, which described "widespread wrongdoing", then he would have "acted differently". He ends his letter by repeating that he neither knew about, nor attempted to hide, wrongdoing, and tells MPs: "The evidence does not support any other conclusion." James Murdoch: What he wrote "I take my share of responsibility for not uncovering wrongdoing earlier. However, I have not misled Parliament. I did not know about, nor did I try to hide, wrongdoing. I do not believe the evidence before you supports any other conclusion..." "It has been said I did not ask enough questions. However, the truth is that incomplete answers and what now appears to be false assurances were given to the questions that I asked."

James Murdoch pleads innocence ahead of committee report

James Murdoch has written to an influential parliamentary committee, investigating a phone hacking scandal at his company, to apologise and restate his innocence ahead of a potentially damaging report that could determine his future in Britain. The 39-year-old son of Rupert wrote to the committee to accept responsibility for failing to uncover the criminal behaviour, which has damaged the reputation of the News Corp media empire, British politicians and police. At stake is his role as chairman of British pay-TV group BSkyB and potentially his future at News Corp, where he had for years been marked out as the heir apparent to his father Rupert as chief executive.   "I did not know about, nor did I try to hide, wrongdoing," he said in the letter published by the committee on Wednesday. "Whilst I accept my share of responsibility for not uncovering wrongdoing sooner, I did not mislead parliament and the evidence does not support any other conclusion." Analysts and some shareholders believe Murdoch would struggle to remain at BSkyB if he is singled out for particular criticism as it could impact his ability to negotiate with the government and regulators on behalf of one of Britain's most powerful media firms. The all-party committee summoned James and his father Rupert to a hearing at the height of the scandal last July, for a three-hour often testy grilling that was watched live by millions on television in both Britain and the United States. Just four months later, the younger Murdoch had to return to answer further detailed questions over what he knew and when after two former colleagues publicly contradicted his evidence. News Corp's British newspaper arm News International had long argued that the hacking of voicemails to generate stories was the work of a single rogue reporter and private investigator who had already gone to jail for the crime. But as more people came forward to accuse the company of hacking their phones, that defence crumbled and attention turned to those at the top of the company and it was asked why they had not pushed further to discover the truth. "Clearly, with the benefit of hindsight, I acknowledge that wrongdoing should have been uncovered earlier," Murdoch said in his letter. The parliamentary committee had originally planned to publish its report before Christmas but due to the sensitivity of the material it is having to write the document by committee and is now aiming for the Easter holiday in April.

British man, wife killed at Thai resort

 

POLICE say a British man and his Thai wife have been robbed and beaten to death at a seaside resort south of Bangkok. Police Major General Wichean Tantawiriya says three Thai men - a security guard and chef at the resort and their friend - were arrested today and had confessed to killing the couple and taking a mobile phone and 5000 baht ($155). Wichean says the bodies of Michael Raymond, 68, and Suchada Bowkamdee, 52, were discovered yesterday in their bungalow at the Jack Beach Resort in Prachuap Khiri Khan province, 350km south of Bangkok. He says they had checked in a day earlier. Wichean says two of the three suspects were addicted to methamphetamine, a stimulant, and needed money to buy drugs.

American Airlines flight attendant restrained after taking over PA system and screaming 'we're going to crash'

 

A flight attendant had to be restrained by passengers and crew on an American Airlines flight after she started ranting that the plane was going to crash over the PA system. According to news.com.au, she told passengers on the flight from Dallas to Chicago: "We are not taking off. We're having technical difficulties. We are heading back to the gate." First class travellers helped cabin crew subdue the woman after she started screaming things like, "I am not responsible for crashing this plane", talking about 9/11, and rambling about American Airlines' bankruptcy.

A Moroccan teenager killed herself after a judge forced her to marry her rapist.

 

The 16-year-old girl, named as Amina Filali, ate rat poison after a Tangier court which was supposed to be punishing her 26-year-old attacker decided that they should instead be wed.

This is because Moroccan laws exempt a rapist from punishment if he agrees to marry his victim.

Sentenced: A judge in Tangier (pictured) ordered the rapist to marry his victim as 'punishment'

Traumatised by the rape and the forced marriage, Moroccan newspaper al-Massae said she committed suicide at her husband's house.

 

 

 

Hafida Elbaz, director of the Women’s Solidarity Association, criticised the law and said rapists often believed they could avoid punishment by marrying their victims.

Rape victim: Gulnaz, who was pardoned by the Afghan president earlier this month, with her daughter in a Kabul jail. She was today released

The incident throws more light on the way women are treated in Islamic countries.

Last year Afghan 21-year-old Gulnaz was jailed for 'adultery by force' after she was brutally raped by her husband's cousin.

Her attacker was jailed for seven years for the crime that left her pregnant.

A global outrage saw the President of Afghanistan personally pardoning her and releasing her from Kabul's Badam Bagh jail, with no pre-conditions.

Goldman Sachs director quits 'morally bankrupt' Wall Street bank

 

A Goldman Sachs director in London has resigned after publishing a devastating open letter accusing senior staff of being "morally bankrupt" and bent on extracting maximum fees from clients by offloading unsuitable investment products. Greg Smith, who has left his post as executive director of the firm's equity derivatives business in Europe, claimed that chief executive Lloyd Blankfein and president Gary Cohn have "lost hold of the firm's culture on their watch". He added that "this decline in the firm's moral fibre represents the single most serious threat to its long-run survival".. Smith's charges, which were swiftly denied by the bank, were published in Wednesday's New York Times and raised questions about the firm's relationship with existing clients, whom Smith claimed were referred to as "muppets". Lord Oakeshott, the Liberal Democrat peer and his party's former Treasury spokesman in the Lords, said the matter raised questions about any relationship between the UK government and Goldman. Smith, who joined Goldman as a summer intern and worked at the firm for 12 years, first in New York and then in London, claimed managing directors made their remarks about "muppets" in internal email. "I attend derivatives sales meetings where not one single minute is spent asking questions about how we can help clients. It's purely about how we can make the most possible money off them." Selected as one of 10 people, out of a firm of 30,000, to appear in a Goldman recruiting video which is played on college campuses around the world, Smith has hired and mentored new recruits and managed a summer intern programme for the bank. "I knew it was time to leave when I realised I could no longer look students in the eye and tell them what a great place this was to work," he wrote. He said junior analysts are absorbing a culture in which the most important question is "how much money did we make off the client?", and that hearing talk of "muppets," "ripping eyeballs out" and "getting paid" will not turn them into "model citizens". "Leadership used to be about ideas, setting an example and doing the right thing. Today, if you make enough money for the firm (and are not currently an axe murderer) you will be promoted to a position of influence." In response, Goldman Sachs denied that Smith was giving an accurate view of life at the company. "We disagree with the views expressed, which we don't think reflect the way we run our business. In our view, we will only be successful if our clients are successful. This fundamental truth lies at the heart of how we conduct ourselves," the bank said. Fast-track to promotion Smith claims to have advised the five largest US asset managers, Middle East and Asian sovereign wealth funds, and the world's two largest hedge funds. His letter did not name them, but Bloomberg ranks Man Group and Bridgewater Associates as the biggest hedge funds. The LibDem peer Oakeshott said: "We know in the City that Goldmans help themselves before their clients. Now here's the proof. Greg Smith says you get promoted there if you make enough money for the firm and you are not an axe murderer - and the people of Greece and the rest of the eurozone are paying the price after Goldmans cooked their books and Greece joined the euro at an unsustainably high exchange rate. Until this culture is stamped out, Goldmans are not fit and proper to receive a penny of British taxpayers' money or advise our government in any way." Goldman is among the gilt-edged market makers which help to facilitate trading in UK government bonds. Smith claims the fast-track to a Goldman promotion involves persuading clients to invest in stocks or other products "that we are trying to get rid of because they are not seen as having a lot of potential profit"; getting clients to trade "whatever will bring the biggest profit to Goldman" – referred to internally as "hunting elephants" and securing a job trading "any illiquid, opaque product with a three-letter acronym". Goldman has lost the "secret sauce" that allowed it to endure for 143 years and is at risk of losing its clients' trust, wrote Smith: "Goldman Sachs is one of the world's largest and most important investment banks and it is too integral to global finance to continue to act in this way. The firm has veered so far from the place I joined right out of college that I can no longer in good conscience say that I identify with what it stands for."

Escaped prisoner Anthony Downes arrested and held in Amsterdam

 

Anthony Downes, who was arrested in Amsterdam, escaped from a prison van while being transported from HMP Manchester to Liverpool Crown Court in July last year. He had been facing trial for conspiracy to possess firearms with intent to endanger life and conspiracy to cause damage with intent to endanger life. He was convicted in his absence at Woolwich Crown Court and is due to be sentenced at the end of this week. Downes, 26, featured as part of Crimestoppers’ latest Operation Captura Campaign in October 2011, which seeks to locate wanted fugitives believed to have fled to Spain, who are wanted by UK law enforcement agencies. Lord Ashcroft, KCMG, Founder and Chair of Crimestoppers, said: “This is yet another example of how criminals on the run will eventually be caught and I am delighted to hear that this individual has been arrested. “Crimestoppers is seeing huge success with its fugitive campaigns and the fact that we now have 48 arrests out of 65 appeals from our Captura campaign proves that wanted criminals will eventually be brought to justice.” Deputy Chief Executive, Dave Cording, added: “This arrest comes less than six months after the fifth anniversary of Operation Captura. “Through close collaboration with the Spanish police, SOCA and the public, these individuals have nowhere to hide and those still on the run should think about handing themselves in before they are caught next.” This latest arrest brings the total number of those located to 48 out of 65 appeals since the campaign launched in October 2006. Operation Captura is the successful multi-agency campaign which identifies serious criminals believed to be on the run in Spain.

Expats in Spain warned of faulty hip replacements

Therapist Carol Duquemin, 59, decided to act after being forced to have her hip replacement removed after just four months. Duquemin – whose ordeal came after the manufacturer recalled the faulty product in 2010 – has teamed up with free health care service Medilink to provide advice and support to expats. “Up to 9,000 people in Spain could have been affected by the implants,” Duquemin said. “People are still not aware of the problem and the danger it poses to their health. “The law says you have to have it removed in the country where you had the operation but some hospitals here are not giving the help and information that they should, and it is a big operation that causes a huge trauma to the body.

Taliban fire at delegates visiting Afghan massacre site

 

Taliban militants opened fire on an Afghan government delegation visiting one of the two villages in southern Afghanistan where a US soldier is suspected of killing 16 Afghan civilians. The delegation was talking with families of the victims in Balandi village on Tuesday when they heard shooting, said Qayum Karzai, a brother of the Afghan president who was part of the group. He said he did not believe anyone was killed in the attack, but he had heard reports of one person wounded in the foot. "We were giving them our condolences, then we heard two very, very light shots," said Karzai. "Then we assumed that it was the national army that started to fire in the air." He said that the members of the delegation were safe and were heading back to Kandahar city. An Associated Press reporter accompanying the delegation said the gunfire came from two different directions. The US is holding an army staff sergeant in custody who is suspected of carrying out the killings before dawn on Sunday in two villages close to his base in Kandahar province's Panjwai district, considered the birthplace of the Taliban. Villagers have described him stalking from house to house in the middle of the night, opening fire on sleeping families and then burning some of the bodies. Nine of the 16 killed were children, and three were women, according to Karzai. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid vowed to take revenge for the attack in a statement sent to reporters on Tuesday. He said the soldier should be tried as a war criminal and executed by the victims' relatives. Also on Tuesday, hundreds of students in eastern Afghanistan shouted angry slogans against the US and the American soldier accused of carrying out the killings, the first significant protest in response to the tragedy. The killings have caused outrage in Afghanistan but have not sparked the kind of violent protests seen last month after American soldiers burned Muslim holy books and other Islamic texts. Afghans have become used to dealing with civilian casualties in over a decade of war. Some have said the deaths in Panjwai were more in keeping with Afghans' experience of deadly night raids and air strikes by US-led forces than the Qur'an burnings were. But the students protesting at a university in Jalalabad city, 80 miles east of the capital Kabul, were incensed. "Death to America!" and "Death to the soldier who killed our civilians!" shouted the crowd. Some carried a banner that called for a public trial of the soldier, whom US officials have identified as a married, 38-year-old father of two who was trained as a sniper and recently suffered a head injury in Iraq. Other protesters burned an effigy of Barack Obama. "The reason we are protesting is because of the killing of innocent children and other civilians by this tyrant US soldier," said Sardar Wali, a university student. "We want the United Nations and the Afghan government to publicly try this guy." Obama has expressed his shock and sadness and extended his condolences to the families of the victims. But he has also said the horrific episode would not speed up plans to pull out foreign forces, despite increasing opposition at home to the war in Afghanistan.

Naked cyclists in Spanish city protests

 

Thousands of naked cyclists took to the streets of Madrid, A Coruña, Valladolid and other cities across Spain on Saturday to demand greater use of bicycles and more infrastructure for cyclists. The cyclists say they feel ‘naked’ in the heavy traffic of the cities and that they were showing their ‘fragile bodywork’ to demand greater respect from other road users.

525 hectares affect by fire at Tossa de Mar

 

Fire fighters brought a fire on the Costa Brava under control on Saturday after it had affected some 525 hectares. The famous local Tramutana northerly wind complicated matters, and dozens of residents had to be evacuated from their homes in Tossa de Mar and Llagostera. The fire started on Friday and was out by Saturday afternoon after firemen opened a firebreak by the road which goes between Sant Grau and Tossa de Mar so they had better access to the fire. Airborne resources, three helicopters and four planes, were key in the controlling of the fire on Saturday after land based equipment was using during Friday night. The cause of the Girona fire, and of the four fires in the Pyrenees which are now extinguished is being investigated.

44 year old British angler, named as Andrew Latham, has died while out fishing for carp at the Amadorio dam

44 year old British angler, named as Andrew Latham, has died while out fishing for carp at the Amadorio dam inland from Villajoyosa. He died instantly last Wednesday morning, at about 1130am, when his fishing line hit a power cable after he lifted his rod above his head after catching a fish. A fellow anger called the emergency services, when he saw the body floating in the reservoir, but they were unable to revive the Briton. Spanish police say they are treating it as an accident. It’s not yet clear whether Andrew Latham was a resident of Spain or on holiday.

British man falls to his death in Benidorm

 

42 year old father of four, Tyrone Jones, known as Ty, has died trying to climb into his apartment after locking himself out on the last day of his holiday. He had been visiting Benidorm for two weeks with a friend. The motor trader from Exeter in Devon fell off a four metre wall and suffered fatal head wounds. Reports indicate the top bricks of the wall were loose. His grieving relatives report that he must have been lying on the ground for up to five hours before he was seen. His parents flew out to Spain when they heard about the tragedy and Ty was on life support in hospital. His organs have been donated to save the lives of three other people, with use being made of his kidneys, pancreas and liver.

Nicolas Sarkozy threatens to pull France out of Schengen zone

His call came as the French centre-Right threw its full firepower behind their candidate in Villepinte, near Charles de Gaulle airport, in a huge, glitzy show of force designed to breath new life into his flagging campaign. Hailed like a prizefighter, Mr Sarkozy climbed the huge white stage to the strains of his campaign anthem and an amended slogan: "Strong France with You". Actor Gérard Depardieu lent some star power to proceedings, along with Mr Sarkozy's wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy and her predecessor as First Lady, Bernadette Chirac. Days after telling France that he would give up politics if he lost the forthcoming elections, Mr Sarkozy told supporters "I have lost none of my desire to act" before launching into a series of protectionist proposals for France and Europe. These included suspending France's participation in the Schengen visa-free zone signed by all 27 EU states bar Britain and Ireland if its rules were not revised to fight illegal immigration in the coming 12 months.

US soldier has killed 16 Afghan civilians, including nine children,

A US soldier has killed 16 Afghan civilians, including nine children, after entering their homes in Kandahar. Sky sources said the Afghan victims also included women and elderly men. Minister of Border and Tribal Affairs Asadullah Khalid, who is investigating the incident, said the soldier entered three homes, killing 11 people in the first one. The Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) coalition confirmed the incident but did not release the number of killed or injured. Sky defence reporter Mark Stone said: "Details are still sketchy and various death tolls have emerged. "It appears to be an isolated incident and the soldier is believed to have been a staff sergeant." Isaf Deputy Commander Lt Gen Adrian Bradshaw said: "I wish to convey my profound regrets and dismay at the actions apparently taken by one coalition member in Kandahar province. "I cannot explain the motivation behind such callous acts, but they were in no way part of authorised ISAF military activity." According to the Panjwai district governor office, seven people died and up to 17 injured were injured in the rampage. The injured have been treated for their wounds at Nato medical facilities. Protests were held over the Koran-burning incident The US embassy in Kabul attempted to quell expected Afghan unrest by also issuing an apology. It said: "We deplore any attack by a member of the US armed forces against innocent civilians, and denounce all violence against civilians. "We assure the people of Afghanistan that the individual or individuals responsible for this act will be identified and brought to justice." The diplomatic response comes after weeks of tense relations between US forces and their Afghan hosts following the burning of Korans and other religious materials at an American base. Although US officials apologised and said the burning was an accident, the incident sparked violent protests and attacks. Britain also pulled out civilian advisers from buildings in Kabul as protests spread. Six American soldiers have been killed in attacks by their Afghan colleagues since the Koran burnings came to light.

United States service member walked out of a military base in a rural district of southern Afghanistan on Sunday and opened fire on three nearby houses, killing at least 15 civilians

 

United States service member walked out of a military base in a rural district of southern Afghanistan on Sunday and opened fire on three nearby houses, killing at least 15 civilians, local villagers and provincial officials said. Related Security Fears Lead Groups to Rethink Work in Afghanistan (March 11, 2012) U.S. and Afghanistan Agree on Prisoner Transfer as Part of Long-Term Agreement (March 10, 2012) Afghan Officer Sought in Killing of 9 Colleagues (March 9, 2012) Connect With Us on Twitter Follow @nytimesworld for international breaking news and headlines. Twitter List: Reporters and Editors Readers’ Comments Share your thoughts. Post a Comment » Read All Comments (1) » The shooting risks further inciting anti-American sentiment in Afghanistan and troubling a relationship that had already been brought to a new low by the burning of Korans at an American military base last month. The American embassy in Afghanistan quickly issued a statement on Sunday urging calm. The NATO-led coalition said in a statement on Sunday that a United States service member had been detained after an incident in Kandahar Province, in the south of the country, and that a number of civilians had been killed. Villagers in Belandi in the Panjway district of Kandahar, where the shooting took place, said the service member had attacked three houses, killing 11 people in one house and four in a second home. Five other villagers were wounded, they said. Panjway, a rural suburb of Kandahar, was traditionally a Taliban stronghold. It was a focus of the United States surge in 2010 and was the scene of heavy fighting. The governor of Kandahar Province, Tooryalai Wesa, condemned the shooting, although he could not immediately confirm the number of people killed. A coalition spokesman in Kabul, Capt. Justin Brockhoff, said that it was not clear what had led to the incident. He said the civilians wounded in the shooting were taken to a coalition hospital where they were being treated. One of the houses attacked in the village belonged to a tribal elder, according to a person from the village. “We don’t know why he killed people,” said the villager, Aminullah, who like many Afghans goes by a single name. Aminullah said the soldier was alone. “There was no fighting or attacks.” In the statement, the United States military raced to head off Afghan outrage. “This is a deeply regrettable incident and we extend our thoughts and concerns to the families involved,” the statement said. It went on to say that American forces, in cooperation with the Afghan authorities, would investigate the incident. In its comments, the American Embassy also sought to ease tensions, offering “its deepest condolences to the families of the victims of today’s tragic shooting.” “We are saddened by this violent act against our Afghan friends,” the statement said. In a separate incident, four Afghans were killed and three wounded on Friday when coalition helicopters apparently hunting Taliban insurgents fired instead on villagers in Kapisa province in eastern Afghanistan, according to Abdul Hakim Akhondzada, governor of Tagab district in Kapisa. Last month, the burning of the Korans touched off nationwide rioting and increased the targeting of American troops, resulting in at least 29 Afghans dead and 6 American soldiers killed. The results of the official military inquiry into the Koran burnings are still awaited, including any decision on what kind of disciplinary action may be faced by the American service members identified as being directly linked to the incident. The upheaval provoked by the Koran burnings put a temporary halt to cooperation between the Afghans and Americans, and disrupted planning for the military withdrawal. But relations seemed somewhat back on track after the two governments on Friday broke an impasse on a long-term strategic partnership deal by agreeing for the Afghans to assume control of the main coalition prison in six months. In another incident in January, American officials had to contend with the fallout from a video that showed four United States Marines urinating on the corpses of what appeared to be the corpses of three Taliban members. In 2010, a rogue group of American soldiers, whose members patrolled roads and small villages, also near Kandahar, killed three Afghan civilians for sport in a series of crimes. The soldier accused of being the ringleader of the group was convicted of three counts of murder by an American military panel in November.

Six dead UK soldiers set to be named

Six British soldiers killed in southern Afghanistan by a Taliban bomb are to be named by the Ministry of Defence later. Five from 3rd Battalion the Yorkshire Regiment and one from 1st Battalion The Duke of Lancaster's Regiment died while on patrol on Tuesday. It is the biggest single loss of UK life in Afghanistan since 2006. Meanwhile, head of the Armed Forces General Sir David Richards has told the Times the UK will "hold its nerve" in Afghanistan. He said the British military strategy would remain unchanged, with service personnel set to continue combat operations in the region until the end of 2014. The deaths took the number of British military deaths in Afghanistan since 2001 to 404. More information has emerged about Wednesday's incident. 'Powerful bomb' Senior army and intelligence officials in Helmand province told the BBC: "It was a joint Afghan National Army and British patrol from 215 Core of ANA - there was a distance between our vehicles. "It was a powerful bomb which had been planted recently. This area close to Kandahar's Maywand district is a major Taliban criss-crossing terrain - the Taliban fighters have been moving from this area from Kandahar's Panjwai to Maywand and than to Helmand province - they also would go from Helmand into Kandahar province.'' An Afghan intelligence official with the country's spy agency, the National Directorate of Security, told the BBC: "The patrols in this area were meant to deny and deprive the Taliban from movement from Kandahar into Helmand and from Helmand into Kandahar. "They knew that for quite some time that there was an increase in Taliban presence in the area, they had been active and present in the area and had been planting roadside bombs." General Richards said the progress made since entering the country in the wake of the 9/11 attacks was "truly impressive". He said: "As progress continues the work of our servicemen and women will draw down but our efforts will endure. "Sadly, as we hold that course it is likely that others will lose loved ones." Some of the soldiers' colleagues spoke to the BBC last month of their fears about being posted to Afghanistan. He added that he and his troops do not "underestimate the dangers" faced in Afghanistan, but understood "the importance of the mission with which we are charged". "We will hold our nerve," he said. His comments echoed sentiments expressed by Defence Secretary Philip Hammond who said the timetable for withdrawal remained on track despite this "cowardly attack". "This will not shake our resolve to see through the mission - I believe we owe that to all the brave men and women who have sacrificed their lives and put themselves at risk over the last few years," he told the BBC. The dead soldiers have now been returned to Camp Bastion in Helmand. Prime Minister David Cameron said the deaths marked a "desperately sad day for our country". "Every death and every injury reminds us of the human cost paid by our armed forces to keep our country safe," he said, at the start of Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday. In a statement, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said the six soldiers were on a security patrol in a Warrior armoured fighting vehicle when it was caught in an explosion in Kandahar province.. The BBC understands that the area was sparsely populated and particularly unstable, with insurgents known to have planted roadside bombs there. BBC defence correspondent Caroline Wyatt said the six soldiers had been in the country for less than a month. Most of the 9,500 UK troops in Afghanistan are expected to be withdrawn by the end of 2014, when 13 years of combat operations in the country are set to cease.

The Next Frontier: Emotional Sobriety

 

"The Next Frontier: Emotional Sobriety" by Bill W I think that many oldsters who have put our AA "booze cure" to severe but successful tests still find they often lack emotional sobriety. Perhaps they will be the spearhead for the next major development in AA -- the development of much more real maturity and balance (which is to say, humility) in our relations with ourselves, with our fellows, and with God. Those adolescent urges that so many of us have for top approval, perfect security, and perfect romance -- urges quite appropriate to age seventeen -- prove to be an impossible way of life when we are at age forty-seven or fifty-seven. Since AA began, I've taken immense wallops in all these areas because of my failure to grow up, emotionally and spiritually. My God, how painful it is to keep demanding the impossible, and how very painful to discover finally, that all along we have had the cart before the horse! Then comes the final agony of seeing how awfully wrong we have been, but still finding ourselves unable to get off the emotional merry-go-round. How to translate a right mental conviction into a right emotional result, and so into easy, happy, and good living -- well, that's not only the neurotic's problem, it's the problem of life itself for all of us who have got to the point of real willingness to hew to right principles in all our affairs. Even then, as we hew away, peace and joy may still elude us. That's the place so many of us AA oldsters have come to. And it's a hell of a spot, literally. How shall our unconscious -- from which so many of our fears, compulsions and phony aspirations still stream -- be brought into line with what we actually believe, know and want! How to convince our dumb, raging and hidden "Mr. Hyde" becomes our main task. I've recently come to believe that this can be achieved. I believe so because I begin to see many benighted ones -- folks like you and me -- commencing to get results. Last autumn [several years back -- ed.] depression, having no really rational cause at all, almost took me to the cleaners. I began to be scared that I was in for another long chronic spell. Considering the grief I've had with depressions, it wasn't a bright prospect. I kept asking myself, "Why can't the Twelve Steps work to release depression?" By the hour, I stared at the St. Francis Prayer..."It's better to comfort than to be the comforted." Here was the formula, all right. But why didn't it work? Suddenly I realized what the matter was. My basic flaw had always been dependence -- almost absolute dependence - on people or circumstances to supply me with prestige, security, and the like. Failing to get these things according to my perfectionist dreams and specifications, I had fought for them. And when defeat came, so did my depression. There wasn't a chance of making the outgoing love of St. Francis a workable and joyous way of life until these fatal and almost absolute dependencies were cut away. Because I had over the years undergone a little spiritual development, the absolute quality of these frightful dependencies had never before been so starkly revealed. Reinforced by what Grace I could secure in prayer, I found I had to exert every ounce of will and action to cut off these faulty emotional dependencies upon people, upon AA, indeed, upon any set of circumstances whatsoever. Then only could I be free to love as Francis had. Emotional and instinctual satisfactions, I saw, were really the extra dividends of having love, offering love, and expressing a love appropriate to each relation of life. Plainly, I could not avail myself of God's love until I was able to offer it back to Him by loving others as He would have me. And I couldn't possibly do that so long as I was victimized by false dependencies. For my dependency meant demand -- a demand for the possession and control of the people and the conditions surrounding me. While those words "absolute demand" may look like a gimmick, they were the ones that helped to trigger my release into my present degree of stability and quietness of mind, qualities which I am now trying to consolidate by offering love to others regardless of the return to me. This seems to be the primary healing circuit: an outgoing love of God's creation and His people, by means of which we avail ourselves of His love for us. It is most clear that the current can't flow until our paralyzing dependencies are broken, and broken at depth. Only then can we possibly have a glimmer of what adult love really is. Spiritual calculus, you say? Not a bit of it. Watch any AA of six months working with a new Twelfth Step case. If the case says "To the devil with you," the Twelfth Stepper only smiles and turns to another case. He doesn't feel frustrated or rejected. If his next case responds, and in turn starts to give love and attention to other alcoholics, yet gives none back to him, the sponsor is happy about it anyway. He still doesn't feel rejected; instead he rejoices that his one-time prospect is sober and happy. And if his next following case turns out in later time to be his best friend (or romance) then the sponsor is most joyful. But he well knows that his happiness is a by-product -- the extra dividend of giving without any demand for a return. The really stabilizing thing for him was having and offering love to that strange drunk on his doorstep. That was Francis at work, powerful and practical, minus dependency and minus demand. In the first six months of my own sobriety, I worked hard with many alcoholics. Not a one responded. Yet this work kept me sober. It wasn't a question of those alcoholics giving me anything. My stability came out of trying to give, not out of demanding that I receive. Thus I think it can work out with emotional sobriety. If we examine every disturbance we have, great or small, we will find at the root of it some unhealthy dependency and its consequent unhealthy demand. Let us, with God's help, continually surrender these hobbling demands. Then we can be set free to live and love; we may then be able to Twelfth Step ourselves and others into emotional sobriety. Of course I haven't offered you a really new idea -- only a gimmick that has started to unhook several of my own "hexes" at depth. Nowadays my brain no longer races compulsively in either elation, grandiosity or depression. I have been given a quiet place in bright sunshine.

There is something beautiful about the essence of Step 12 in recovery

 There is something beautiful about the essence of Step 12 in recovery. It is about the "joy of living" and talks about how working the previous 11 steps now gives the person in recovery a new compass in which to live by: their spiritual beliefs and principles. One moves from the experience of being driven, to more consciousness about who they are, what they are doing, and why they are doing it. If taken directly from the program, the spiritual principles that correspond to each step, and that serve as a guide are as follows:

1. Honesty

2. Hope

3. Faith

4. Courage

5. Integrity

6. Willingness

7. Humility

8. Brotherly Love

9. Justice

10. Perseverance

11. Unity and Spirituality

12. Service and Gratitude

One of the gifts of living according to principles is that they can support us no matter what our history, our patterning, or our circumstances. They can orient us when objective realities have lost their command. Spiritual principles become the ultimate navigation system. You may have lost a job or a promotion, you might be in an argument with a friend or partner, but you can always turn to the principles for a soft place to land, to serve as a guide, and to put your current position in context.

Step 1 for example, "Admitted we were powerless over alcohol and that our lives had become unmanageable," starts with the poignant word, "admit." I've always appreciated the double meaning—it implies that we have to be honest but it additionally signals admittance, as in "admit one." So, right off the bat, the navigation system orients the person in recovery over a threshold that had been previously impassable. Denial begins to be shed and honesty becomes something to strive for.

Each of the principles are not only guides, but anchors, allowing for an experience of grounding in what can often be a challenging and chaotic ride. The spiritual path becomes the perfect container for the ups and downs we all experience. This means that sometimes, the direction we are given is to stay put. In times of loss, doubt, and uncertainty—courage allows us to lean in to such experiences, to face our fears and our demons when all we want to do is flee. Hope and faith provide additional support by reminding us that the dark places aren't static states and that we will survive the ride.

Integrity is something I talk about a great deal in Recovering Spirituality. To me, it is about embracing the fullness of the human condition, being intimately and integrally connected to the whole. It allows for greater compassion for ourselves and others because we understand that we will never overcome our humanness, which means that we are all perfectly flawed.

So, when life steers you in a direction that you never imagined going, or when you feel like you can't find the purpose or meaning in your life, see if you can find some grounding and direction in the principles. They are perfect when our lives are not—the ideal GPS (Global Positioning System). Maybe the task at hand is to orient yourself towards service to others, or perhaps the unity of the fellowship can provide some laughterright when you thought it was impossible to smile. No matter the challenge, there is a guiding principle that can shine some light on the darkened path. 

And if all is going well, don't let this discourage you from leaning in even further to the principle driven life. Pain may be the touchstone to spiritual growth, but the path is always available to us.

Earth braces for biggest space storm in five years

A pair of scorching explosions on the Sun's surface is sparking the biggest radiation and geomagnetic storm the Earth has experienced in five years, space weather experts said Wednesday. The storm, expected to hit Earth early Thursday US time and last through Friday, may disrupt power grids, GPS systems and satellites, and has already forced some airlines to change their routes around the polar regions. In addition to possibly garbling some of Earthlings' most prized gadgets, the event will likely give nighttime viewers in parts of Central Asia a prime look at the aurora borealis, or northern lights, on Thursday night. "Space weather has gotten very interesting over the past 24 hours," said Joseph Kunches, a space weather scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The fuss began late Sunday at an active region on the Sun known as 1429, with a big solar flare that was associated with a burst of solar wind and plasma known as a coronal mass ejection that hurtled in Earth's direction at some four million miles per hour (6.4 million kilometers per hour).

Spanish tax authorities are cracking down on tax offenders

Hacienda has announced it will be keeping a close eye on fiscal engineering from e-commerce firms trading on the Internet. The Agencia Tributaría will also be keeping a close watch on sportsmen and women and artists. A new anti-fraud plan also includes alerts for contraband tobacco and the Secretary of State for Hacienda, Miguel Ferra, says they expect to recover 8.171 billion more from the measures. Hacienda has been told it cannot take on staff but it can substitute one in ten of the retirees. The number of inspections on elite sportsmen will go up by 14%, there will be greater control on house rental and undeclared businesses, using evidence of electrical consumption. Hacienda is also looking more closely at people who declare themselves insolvent when they are not, when they hide their assets. The use of preventative embargoes is to be extended, and offenders who fail to pay their debts to the fiscal face prison. Hacienda has established also new agreements with fiscal authorities in Switzerland, Andorra, Pánama, Bahamas and the Dutch Antilles.

How HMRC finally caught Nasir Khan

 

Nasir Khan had a successful accessories business, a jet-set lifestyle and reputation as a pillar of the community. But all that vanished in December when he was jailed for his part in a £250m VAT fraud. Jasper Jackson discovers how a 10-year investigation by HMRC led to his downfall At the start of 2001, Nasir Khan was the owner and managing director of a moderately successful accessories business called The Accessory People, which had an annual turnover of £13 million. By the end of that year, however, he was knee-deep in a £250 million VAT fraud involving the import and export of mobile phones. Khan’s journey from businessman to criminal finally ended at Southwark Crown Court fi ve days before Christmas last year, when he became the 15th member of a pan European criminal gang to be jailed for the fraud. Khan got nine years behind bars for money laundering in the last of six trials that resulted in the 14 other defendants being convicted of defrauding the public purse. The gang was sentenced to a total of almost 100 years in prison. The convictions were the culmination of a 10-year investigation by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) into a complex web of criminal activity linked to Khan and his associates that encompassed more than 200 companies in the UK, Spain and Holland and bank accounts holding millions of pounds tucked away in Hong Kong, Dubai and Pakistan. Among those convicted for their role in the scam were a drug smuggler, a former used car salesman and a fish and chip shop owner. According to HMRC, Khan and his 14 associates launched their fraudulent operation in June 2001 as the market for mobile accessories went into decline. The fraudsters embarked on a complex version of ‘missing trader’ VAT fraud known as ‘carousel fraud’ because it involves goods passing into and out of a country through a string of companies. The fraudsters would set up a UK company to import goods from the EU, on which it didn’t pay VAT. It would then sell them on to another company in the UK, charging VAT on the sale that should have been paid to HMRC. The second company would in turn sell on the goods to an intermediary controlled by the gang, in order to put distance between the original company and the end of the chain. This process would be repeated a number of times through so-called ‘buffer’ companies in order to disguise the fraud. Eventually, a UK-based firm in the chain would sell the goods to another EU firm outside the UK without charging VAT. Because the fi rm exporting the handsets had paid VAT when buying from firms further back in the chain, it was entitled to collect a refund from HMRC. However, the UK company at the very beginning of the chain would disappear without ever paying the VAT it had made on the first sale and other firms along the chain would also, covering the tracks of the fraudsters in the process. In some cases, the goods themselves would only notionally have the value that was being paid for them, with freight companies brought into the fold to provide seemingly legitimate records of transportation. The process would carry on indefinitely, with the goods that left the country later being reintroduced to the UK. Khan’s firm, The Accessory People (TAP), was one of the buffer firms involved in the scam, and he made huge sums of money helping to launder the proceeds of the carousel fraud. In the space of just two years, between 2001 and 2003, TAP’s turnover rose from £13 million to £219 million. Khan became hugely rich as a result, buying luxury apartments in the Putney Wharf and Chelsea Harbour developments on the Thames in London, as well as properties in Spain and Gibraltar. He also bought a luxury boat. Khan even donated £34,000 to Crimestoppers under the name Nasa Khan. Khan has now had £15 million of his assets frozen as HMRC tries to recoup some of the money lost to the fraud.