Once an unemployed builder, Mr Roca allegedly gave the former mayor Marisol Yague [euro]1.3m ([pound]800,000) in bribes, slipped to her in plain envelopes, funding a facelift and home improvements costing [euro]950,000. The deputy mayor, Isabel Marcos, had [euro]360,000 in cash at her home, while Mr Roca accumulated an art collection worth [euro]30m, including a valuable Miro, displayed in his steaming Jacuzzi. When prosecutors investigated 18 shell companies registered in tax havens worldwide to launder the ill- gotten profits, they found not one legitimate business transaction.
Mr Roca's rise to riches began in 1991, when he became the right- hand man of Marbella's flamboyant mayor, Jesus Gil. He subsequently amassed a [euro]120m fortune, according to the 450-page indictment issued recently by judge Miguel Angel Torres, made mainly from the greed and easy money of Spain's long property boom. Town halls throughout Spain were caught up in the tide of illegality, but the sheer baroque excess of the Marbella scandal dwarfed them all. Last year the government dissolved the entire council and installed a management committee.
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