"He is a character, a mafioso who seems taken from a movie with Al Pacino, except that for him, playing the role of The Godfather is his life." In the south of Tenerife, the figure of Mohamed Jamil Derbah (Batouliyeh, Lebanon, 1964) has never been discreet. Since he settled on the island in 1989, he has been a true chameleon. But never with the desire to remain hidden.
His walks along the coast of Los Cristianos, always glued to his phone, did not go unnoticed. It was more complicated to decipher what he was talking about. He could be addressing, in Spanish, French, English, and Arabic, his commitments as the president of the party Fuerza Canaria; his role as the owner of the communication group Sol de Canarias; or his responsibilities at the helm of the Ponderosa Hotel. He could also be advising the Prime Minister of Guinea Bissau or Senegal, whose friendship he boasted about on social media. Or arranging a meeting like the one he had with the Vice President of the Parliament of the Canary Islands, the socialist Gustavo Matos, on January 29 at a department store in the capital of Tenerife.
There, according to reports from Internal Affairs revealed by EL MUNDO, Derbah asked Matos for solutions to stop police actions affecting the cannabis clubs he owns and/or controls in the south of the island, which, according to investigations, served as a front for cocaine and heroin trafficking. Three months earlier, his party had demanded "greater involvement" from the authorities to improve public safety. He made "an urgent call for them to strengthen police resources in the region." Paradoxically, in the conversations between Matos and the Lebanese man recorded by Internal Affairs, the politician from Tenerife tells him that the only one capable of keeping the south of the island under control is him. "He has tentacles in all institutions. His ambition is to control everything," details an agent who has been investigating the tycoon for years.
"Let's not be hypocrites, everyone knows this gentleman on the island of Tenerife," Matos stated in his press conference yesterday. But at the same time, he said he had "no evidence that he could be engaged in illegal or illicit activities." Something that is hardly compatible for someone who was the Director General of Commerce and Consumption of the Government of the Canary Islands for four years. For more than two decades, Derbah's criminal activities have caused a great social alarm, which has been echoed by the media with headlines and even a documentary on public television.
Derbah's latest arrest, which has kept him behind bars, took place on May 1. He is accused of crimes of organized crime, drug trafficking, money laundering, bribery, and disclosure of secrets. It was not the first time: on November 20, 2001, he celebrated his 37th birthday on a military plane bound for Madrid with 15 other detainees on the island by order of Judge Baltasar Garzón, who identified him as the leader of the Lebanese mafia. The organization operated under the cover of a timeshare business, through which he would have laundered more than 2,000 million pesetas from fraud and extortion. He was also accused of financing Islamic terrorist groups, an accusation that did not prosper. It was the Cedar Operation.
Derbah took the name, a nod to his native Lebanon, to start a book about his life: Mohamed Jamil Derbah: From the shores of Lebanon to the coasts of Tenerife. Published in 2017, in its pages, the journalist Félix Rojas narrates the drama of an "entrepreneur" who was "enormously harmed" by being "taken out of his beloved island, spending nine months in jail, and having a case opened against him in the National Court." It does not mention the 100 million euros he allegedly defrauded from 50,000 people, nor the Boeing 757 that was seized before being arrested again in 2003, along with his brother Hussein, for "starting to rebuild his organization" while on provisional release and for committing serious intimidations against prosecution witnesses. But it does address the figure of John Palmer, a grim legend in Tenerife who lived up to his nickname of Goldfinger in life and death. He fled the UK after being accused of masterminding the armed robbery of 3,500 kilos of gold bars at Heathrow Airport, London, in 1983. He was arrested and accused of melting the gold in one of his jewelry stores. His participation was never proven, but he engraved a plaque on his office desk in Tenerife: "Remember the golden rule: he who has the gold, makes the rules."
It was Palmer, after meeting Derbah in Africa, who introduced him to Tenerife. He started as his head of security, then became his "general manager", and in 1998, he betrayed him. The years of "peace and harmony" turned into a power struggle that lasted three years, which Derbah claims to have overcome by "divine blessing."
From the maximum-security British prison where Palmer was admitted in 2001, Goldfingerordered the assassination of Derbah twice. He first evaded, thanks to a tip-off to the National Police, an attempt by a couple of Italian mafiosos in Tenerife. Then his head was valued at two million pounds, and the contract was given to two Bulgarian hitmen, who planned to kill him during a trip to Paris. Another leak led to the intervention of the Moroccan intelligence service.
Years later, while Derbah already controlled the south of Tenerife, his former godfather and later rival Palmer was not so lucky: he was found dead in the garden of his luxurious Essex home on July 1, 2015. The healthcare professionals who attended to him claimed death by natural causes. But in the autopsy room, they discovered two shots fired with a pistol of such low caliber that they were imperceptible to the naked eye. He was 64 years old, and the murder prevented him from standing trial at the National Court and testifying against his former partner Derbah.