Olive Press Costa Blanca North - Issue 77

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PRETTY AS A PICTURE A Javea ll about

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ARIA is one of few who can trace her local residents roots directly to the sea. Her father’s Javea was a place where its now celebrated southern Cabo de coves could barely be reached by It’s an incrediblela Nao headland. trails carved out donkey, down precipitous ‘Spain’s best’, and spot, regularly dubbed by centuries of fishermen’s has featured in Hollywood feet. films, like the Cold recently named Light of Day, “My family still owns Bruce Willis and Mediterranean’s Barraca cove as one of the If just two fishing huts Sigourney Weaver. starring ‘most Instagrammed on Cala Barraca,” 50 years ago Javea down A tarmac But despite the big spots’. (spelt road now snakes credible privilege Maria tells me. “It’s an in- cliff down dramatic lenciano) was connected to the Xabia in Va- lucky to have missedseasonal influx, Javea is to have them, only sides to the pebbly rest of Spain by dirt roads, the mass days we tend to share our Sunday paellathese award-winning villas like beach as it passes discovered. it’s a gem the world has quickly of Benidorm some 40km to the development the world.” Casa de la Sardinwith era that was south. Its town hall has been voted to have Javea’s 29,000 relatively strict on Once a remote beach, planConde Nast Traveler tial pool in Europe’ and soldthe ‘best residen- eign-born) swellspopulation (half of them for- ning and restrictions prohibit anything than for €4.9 million back in 2017. higher attracted by its to over 100,000 in summer town a palm tree, while the atmospheric has been almost old Playa Granadella collection of beaches like completely untouched – on the farside of Javea’s

Home to the most expensive streets Spain, Javea’s rugged in eastern beauty holds enough jewels to share all hidden round, writes Joshua Parfitt

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COSTA BLANCA

Vol. 3 Issue 77

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Your expat

voice in Spain March 24th - April 6th 2022

Jávea · Altea yorkshirelinencostablanca.com

Chateau Putin EXCLUSIVE: Despite Spain declaring there are no oligarchs owning here, the Olive Press can reveal at least one - ‘a genuine fortress with at least 10 security guards’ with intriguingly close links to the Russian dictator

IT is known as the Rock of the King (or Roca del Rey), a giant 2000m square palace with a private vineyard, helicopter pad and a dozen bedrooms in the hills above Marbella. One of southern Spain’s most expensive mansions, it also boasts a vineyard, bowling alley, mini golf course and, perhaps predictably, a ‘shooting range’. But it is what is under the ground that should be of considerably more concern to the authorities. The Olive Press can reveal that the Russian-owned mega-mansion near Marbella has no less than three basements and numerous tunnels dug into the hills overlooking the strategic Straits of Gibraltar. As well as a giant wine cellar with its own separate champagne room filled with vintage bottles - a classic hallmark of President Putin - it also counts a ‘high-tech panic room’ and a ‘control room, full of screens and buttons’. There are two guard stations ‘with

By Jon Clarke & Jorge Hinojosa

at least 10 guards’, a satellite facility and ‘an underground monitoring device pointing towards the straits’, one source told the Olive Press. While officially it is impossible to know who really owns the property in Spain’s most expensive private enclave, La Zagaleta, in Benahavis, various Olive Press sources say they are certain that Putin is the main investor. “He has definitely visited a number of times, when security is incredibly high,” revealed one. “Zagaleta already has among the best security in Europe, but when Putin is visiting, there is a whole extra level and you can’t get near the house.” More alarmingly, a high-ranking Ukranian resident in Spain, knows a number of people currently working in the property and claims it has armed guards. “They carry guns and I also know that a number of drones h a v e been shot d o w n PLUMBING & AIR CONDITIONING SPECIALISTS

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PALATIAL: Putin mansion facing Gibraltar with armed guards and underground bunkers, and panic room from the sky by them,” she explained. She continued: “When you arrive it is like an airport. You are carefully searched and you have a sticker put on your phone so you can’t take pictures. The guards will also know if it has been removed or altered in any way. Everybody is watched all the time.” Insisting she must remain anonymous for fear of attack by the Russian secret service, she added: “It’s definitely Putin’s house and I know

all about its size and luxuries, the place is literally dripping with gold.” And she added: “It is certainly not the only house that Putin has in Spain and he owns others with partners, with at least one in the Alicante province.” The Ukranian woman, who is now in close touch with the Spanish authorities, added the government should be investigating them and ‘they should be sanctioned at a European level as soon as possible’. The Olive Press has been reporting on the property in question since 2012, when we revealed exclusively that Putin was part of a six-man Russian consortium behind the mansion. The very epitome of extravagance, the villa cost €19 million and sits on an 18,000 m2 plot, with two swimming pools, a cinema and a gym, as well as a 22-car garage. A known Hispanophile, Putin regularly visited Spain 37 times in the 1990s alone, according SALES & RENTALS SPECIALISTS to a book, using false documents. Moriara•Calpe•Jalon•Javea•Denia•Altea In another 2014 book, called Putin’s Kleptocracy, by Karen Dawisha, www.moraira-hamiltons.net

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revealed the dictator visited Spain ‘on forged documents during the period 1996-2000 in connection with business meetings between himself, Boris Berezovsky, and Russian crime figures.’ "These kinds of reports led Spanish police to become suspicious of Russian activity in Spain, and in the 1990s they began monitoring the Russian oligarch Berezovsky, as well as several well-known leaders of Russian organised crime, all of whom had houses on the southern coast of Spain. “In 1999, to their immense surprise, their recorders picked up an unexpected visitor: Putin. He had arrived in Spain illegally, by boat from Gibraltar, having eluded Spanish passport control." And he clearly had more interest in Spain than just sunbathing. According to the Times, in 2015, he had been looking to buy property here since 2000. The newspaper revealed that the head of one of Russia’s biggest crime Continues on Page 2


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