Spain to hit 'Costa del Crime' with UK hotline

From Reuters

MADRID (Reuters) - British and Spanish police, struggling to track down expatriate fugitives and break into a web of foreign traffickers and fraudsters, have asked charity Crimestoppers to set up a tip-off hotline on the Costa del Sol.

Both countries hope Crimestoppers Costas, launched on Tuesday, will become an key intelligence source from the 350,000 expatriates living around the southern city of Malaga -- a group difficult to tap because of the language barrier.

For years British criminals have used the Spanish Costas as the perfect place to disappear among English-speaking expatriates and tourists, but British police are increasingly concerned it is being used by drug traffickers as a base for British operations.

A series of adverts in local papers and on the Crimestoppers website: www.crimestoppers-uk.org/wanted/spainwanted/ aims to hunt down criminals wanted in Britain for a range of crimes including fraud, trafficking, kidnap and murder.

Tip-offs passed to the charity in Britain help solve an average 17 crimes a day and one murder a week, and its head of operations Dave Cording said that until-now weak links between Spanish police and expatriates meant the pilot scheme could make an immediate impact.

"There is good information out there to be had and it's just a question of coordinating the whole thing to bring these people back into the British crime justice system," he told Reuters.

Crimestoppers' anonymous freephone number -- 900 555 111 -- will route calls directly to its London call centre and information will then be passed to Spanish police.

Ronnie Knight, jailed for one of Britain's biggest-ever cash robberies hid on the Costa del Sol as did Kenneth Noye, who helped melt down millions of pounds of stolen gold from the Brinks Mat robbery and was jailed years later for stabbing to death a fellow motorist in a road-rage attack near London.