John 'Goldfinger' Palmer's former head of security Mohamed Jamil Derbah is arrested in corruption probe on Tenerife

The former head of security for one of Britain's most notorious gangsters has been arrested as part of a major corruption investigation on holiday mecca Tenerife.

Mohamed Jamil Derbah, 61, (above left) was one of nine people arrested by the Spanish National Police as part of a complex investigation into suspected corruption and drug trafficking involving police officers.

A Spanish National Police spokesperson said: "Nine people were arrested on Wednesday (May 2 2025) in an operation by police internal affairs. Two were retired police officers and one is serving."

Lebanese Mr Derbah was the head of security for the late John "Goldfinger" Palmer (above right) as he built up a multi-million pound timeshare empire on the island in the late 1980s and 1990s, before the pair split in 1999 and the former set up his own businesses.

The businessman has been a high-profile figure on the island ever since, and denies any involvement in criminality.

In February 2023 he admitted to Essex News and Investigations editor Jon Austin in a interview for the Sunday Express that, at Palmer's request, he inadvertently helped M25 road rage killer Kenneth Noye, 77, while he was on the run on the island, from 1996, after he knifed to death Stephen Cameron, but he said he had no idea he was wanted for murder.

Mr Derbah has ventured into local politics on the island and last year Guinea Bissau's prime minister, Rui Duarte de Barros, appointed Mr Derbah as his special aide and a permanent member of the International Relations and Trade Commission.

Following his arrest on April 30, a court in Tenerife, ordered that Mr Derbah be remanded in custody without bail as the suspected leader of a crime ring.

Just weeks before his arrest, Mr Derbah was interviewed on the island by a former Met Police detective for an upcoming documentary about Palmer's murder.

Former DCI Dave McKelvey travelled to the island with the Murder and Serious Crimes Review Team of his private investigation firm TM Eye.

Mr McKelvey posted on Linkedin: "While on the island, I conducted an extensive interview with Mohamed Jamil Derbah, the controversial Lebanese businessman, now remanded in custody and accused of leading a sophisticated criminal network involving drug trafficking, money laundering, and corrupt police officers.

"Mr Derbah was interviewed at length... Unbeknown to him at the time, he would be arrested shortly after.

"TM Eye’s exclusive interview will now feature in the forthcoming SKY Documentary series ‘Who Killed Goldfinger’, providing new insights into a case that continues to raise serious questions about transnational organised crime, the role of the security services and police, links to terrorism and political corruption."

Mr Derbah has been alleged by the Spanish authorities to be the head of an organised crime group on Tenerife during two attempts to extradite British former accountant Paul Blanchard to Spain to face fraud charges.

Mr Blanchard, 80, (seen above outside the court) of Fulford, near York, is currently appealing a ruling from Westminster Magistrates' Court that he should be extradited to face fraud charges.

Mr Blanchard's case is that he acted as an offshore accountant for Mr Derbah, but in 2001 became an informant for police against him.

Mr Blanchard claims he was then asked by Spanish intelligence police to carry out undercover work against a number of suspects, but officers turned against him after he inadvertently blew his own cover.

After Mr Blanchard supplied "a dossier of evidence on Mr Derbah," he was arrested with several others for alleged involvement in a fraud ring in the Canary Islands which may have had links to the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and the pro-Syrian Shi'ite Amal movement, in November 2001, but no charges were brought at that time.

Below is a police mugshot of Mr Derbah released by Spanish police at the time.

Palmer was known as “Goldfinger” after being cleared in 1987 of smelting down gold from the infamous Brink’s-Mat robbery in November 1983.

He went on to build up a £300million timeshare fortune and featured on the Sunday Times Rich List, but was jailed in the UK for eight years in 2001 after the business was exposed as a major fraud with 16,000 victims.

Palmer was shot dead in the garden of his South Weald home in June 2015 after his assassin spied on him through a hole in his fence.

It was shortly after he was charged in Spain in connection with the timeshare activity, with one theory he was murdered to silence him, amid fears he would strike an informant deal with police.

The murder remains unsolved, but in March The Sun reported how an Essex Police source confirmed that Estonian hitman Imre Arakas, 66, known as The Butcher, who is serving a ten-year jail term for murder in Lithuania, was a "subject of interest" in the investigation, based on intelligence and after it emerged he entered the country two weeks ahead of the hit.