Mark Mills, 40, and Joseph Bowness, 37, were arrested by Spanish police after a boat was found packed with £10m of cocaine.

Mark Mills, 40, and Joseph Bowness, 37,arrested by Spanish police after a boat was found packed with £10m of cocaine.The 250kg haul was found hidden on a 9m yacht, the Dolphin Dance, which had set sail from the Dutch Antilles, a collection of five islands in the Caribbean.The Spanish authorities intercepted the vessel 500 miles off the coast and escorted it into the port of Vigo, in the north west tip of the country.Mark Mills, 40, and Joseph Bowness, 37, both from Liverpool, were later
arrested.The yacht had left San Martin in the Caribbean and it is thought it had stopped at Antioquia, Colombia, where the drugs were loaded.Within hours of the two men being brought back to dry land, officers from the Spanish Agencia Tributaria launched a series of raids on the Costa del Sol.Local reports said 10 homes, two promenade restaurants and a second-hand car dealership were among the addresses raided in Marbella and Fuengirola.
Eight arrests were made in total following the seizure and the raids.
Mills and Bowness are being held alongside men from Spain, Colombia, the
Netherlands and Italy.
It is believed the two Liverpool men are both known to police and refused
consular assistance from the British Embassy in Spain, prefering to instruct
their own legal teams instead.
Reports from the Costa del Sol said 18 top-of-the-range cars were impounded in
the raids, along with 300,000 Euros in cash, a jet ski, a semi-automatic pistol,
a revolver, 60 mobile phones, 20 computers and diverse documents.
Police are also thought to have found heroin, cannabis and cocaine.
The operation, codenamed Candelight, is believed to be a joint operation between
Spanish Customs and the UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency.
It was launched after police discovered a new gang smuggling drugs from South
America to the UK.
The bosses of the operation are thought to have been based on the Costa del Sol,
with local businesses being used to launder the profits.
The cocaine-filled boat was caught a month after smugglers brought cannabis onto
Marbella’s beaches in broad daylight.
The drugs were jet-skied onto the beach from a boat waiting off-shore before
couriers hiding out in nearby scrubland ran to help unload and transfer the
drugs off the sand.
Officers seized two-and-a-half tonnes of cannabis and arrested 10 of the drug
runners, with searches of addresses in Benalmádena, Fuengirola and Mijas.
10,000 Euros in cash were also seized.