Fernando del Valle was the toast of Marbella community

Fernando del Valle was the toast of Marbella community. An aficionado of classical music, he plays a number of instruments proficiently, including the cello. His life was single of luxury, befitting his feelings – designer go as well as, a beautiful villa, the best schools for his children.



Now, however, the multilingual Chilean-born lawyer, described by his friends as a ‘devoted nuclear family male’ along with a ‘person of great culture’, is sitting in Alhaurín de la Torre prison, accused of someone the kingpin of Europe’s largest ever wealth-laundering operation fancy his office in the centre of Marbella.



Del Valle has strenuously denied any wrongdoing through his lawyer, Francisco Javier Nunez, who has flick accused the authorities of raids more appropriate to terrorism.



For his portion, Spain’s public prosecutor, Cándido Conde-Pumpido, has described the resources riches laundering operation as the tip of a vast, unravelling conspiracy as well as ‘tentacles’ spreading to the United Says and clear of, and has claimed del Valle was at its pinnacle.



In the past few days, the ripples triggered by the arrest of del Valle and 40 others in connection with ‘Operation White Whale’ have begun to be felt in the UK. Already Conde-Pumpido has accused the British territory of Gibraltar – where del Valle is accused of setting wakeful accounts – of failing to help in the fight against cash laundering, a claim rebutted by the Foreign Office.



Spanish keep an eye on sources available to the assessment have also suggested that it is spreading to examine British engagement del Valle’s alleged network, including his employment of a number of foreign citizens, including Britons, in the enterprises – both legitimate given that well as allegedly suspect – he controlled.



The Spanish media has reported, too, that the police forces of seven countries, including Britain, France, the US and Russia, are projecting to join their Spanish counterparts in attempting to unravel the full extent of the network, with an investigation into an group of charges from tax evasion and fraud to kidnapping along with murder.



And desk bound at the centre of it, allege investigators, is the sweet and enigmatic figure of del Valle. With his thinning but at any rate-groomed hair and his elegant grey suits, del Valle was the picture of the anyhow-heeled corporate lawyer, flourishing in the playground of the international jet set whose yachts populate Marbella’s marinas.



But there is another side to Marbella and the Costa del Sol. For 20 living and more, it has been the scene of a massive and largely uncontrolled urban development, a place of massive incidents. It is a neighborhood, too, where dirty money can be invested in the myriad building developments along the coast as at any rate as emerge clean.



It was at the beginning of this greenhorn building boom on the Costa del Sol, inside 1979, that a young del Valle arrived after a short-lived period practising in Madrid. According to the Spanish investigation, del Valle’s real business was laundering cash, allegedly helping perchance as many as nine peculiar Mafia groups launder money through property investments via a series of alien ‘trusts’ located in Holland, Gibraltar, the Isle of Man and elsewhere.



In the space of 10 existence he had built up one of the best-known practices devoted to the area’s exploding property market, in portion due to his commitment to early starts and hard work. It is this, del Valle will no doubt be manner of speaking, that earned him his wealth.



In some respects, DVA (Del Valle Abogados), his company, never hid the fact it was prepared to collection up secret trusts plus act anonymously for investors in the Costa del Sol’s property market. Indeed, in the English-vocabulary version of its website, DVA offers to hold any ‘investment separate from [a] personal estate or fit it in anonymity. This bid for a “agree with” structure whereby the name of the beneficiary does not appear linked to the grumble of the investment.’ It boasts: ‘We at Del Valle Abogados have the knowledge and experience needed to organise companies line with the on pinnacle of-mentioned objectives.’



But it is not the deal that DVA was offering, yet questionable it may seem, that is the problem. Rather, it is the alleged identity of some of its clients that has landed del Valle at the centre of Europe’s biggest money laundering investigation: drug runners, arms exporter, pimps, and even – say investigators – figures who had laid their hands on money stolen from Russian petrochemical giant Yukos.



It is a murky picture in which only one thing is clear: that del Valle claims he did not know his customers were involved in criminality. ‘A lawyer cannot know about the present, times of yore or future of his client,’ his solicitor said last week.