Eighty-six members of Marbella's power elite, including two former mayors, are accused of embezzlement on an unprecedented scale. The alleged mastermind was Juan Antonio Roca, accused of taking backhanders from builders and bribing councillors to rubber-stamp illicit property developments. Police seized nearly 1m in cash at the home of his lawyer.

Once an unemployed builder, Roca allegedly gave the former mayor, Marisol Yague, 1.3m in bribes, slipped to her in plain envelopes, funding her facelift and home improvements costing 950,000. The deputy mayor, Isabel Marcos, had 360,000 in cash at her home, while Roca accumulated an art collection worth 30m, including a valuable Miro, displayed in his steaming Jacuzzi. When prosecutors investigated 18 shell companies registered in tax havens worldwide to launder the ill-gotten profits, they found not one legitimate business transaction.

Roca's rise to riches began in 1991, when he became the right-hand man of Marbella's flamboyant mayor, Jesus Gil.

He subsequently amassed a 120m fortune, according to the 450-page indictment issued recently by judge Miguel Angel Torres, made mainly from the greed and easy money of Spain's long property boom. Town halls throughout Spain were caught up in the tide of illegality, but the sheer baroque excess of the Marbella scandal dwarfed them all. Last year, the government dissolved the entire council and installed a management committee.

"Marbella's councillors were on Roca's payroll. They were rewarded for their loyalty and submission, " Judge Torres wrote. He says Roca bent councillors to his will, charged property developers for licences and permits, and laundered profits through companies set up solely to manage and conceal the enterprise. Assets sequestered and seized by the authorities total some 2.4bn.