STEVEN LYONS, head of Scotland’s most feared criminal organisation, has arrived in Spain to face charges of murder, drug trafficking and money laundering after a three-year international investigation.
The 46-year-old was escorted off a flight from Amsterdam at Madrid’s Barajas Airport on June 24, having been arrested in Bali in March.
He was initially deported to the Netherlands due to Indonesia’s lack of an extradition treaty with Spain.
A Dutch court rejected his extradition appeal on June 18, and he arrived seven days later.
Operation Armorum – involving Spain’s Guardia Civil, Police Scotland, the NCA, Europol and the US Drug Enforcement Administration – produced 18 raids, 14 arrests across four countries and the seizure of cash, crypto wallets, high-end watches and company documents.
His partner Amanda Lyons was arrested in Dubai on the same Interpol notice and is reportedly on bail there.
Lyons’ lawyers want the same terms as fellow suspect Johnny Morrissey, who has been walking free on €60,000 bail since June 2024.
But the Scottish gangster is considered to be a treasure trove for Spanish investigators, who’ve long struggled with endless gang violence by cartel figures operating on their shores.
Here are some of the crimes they are likely quiz him about.
Mystery murder charge
Spain announced on the day of his arrival that Lyons is also under investigation for his involvement in a murder on Spanish soil in 2024.
Two killings from that year have been publicly linked to the probe.
The first is Borja Villacís – brother of the former deputy mayor of Madrid – who was shot dead on the Fuencarral-El Pardo road on June 4, 2024.
He had a long criminal record including drug trafficking and money laundering.
The second relates to a shooting that took place on the Costa del Sol at the height of summer two years ago.
A 36-year-old Serbian national was shot dead at a villa party in Estepona in August 2024, found carrying a false Belgian passport, linked to a Balkans criminal organisation.
Spain has been waiting two years to ask Lyons what he knows about them.
His brother, a Champions League final, and a missing €157 million cocaine shipment
Steven Lyons’ brother Eddie Lyons Jr and close associate Ross Monaghan were shot dead by a lone masked gunman at Monaghan’s Bar in Fuengirola on May 31, 2025, while watching the Champions League final.
Michael Riley, 44, from Liverpool, has been charged with the killings and is in Spanish custody.
He has been moved 700 miles to a different jail, sources say, ahead of Lyons’ arrival.
The official line is that the shocking murders were the latest tit-for-tat in a long-running gang war with fellow Glasgow gangsters the Daniels.
But sources indicate that there could be another dimension.
In September 2023, the MV Matthew left Venezuela carrying 2.2 tonnes of cocaine worth an estimated €157 million, funded by the Kinahan cartel, a South American cartel and, per BBC documentary reporting, Iranian figures with Hezbollah connections.
It was to rendezvous at sea with a fishing trawler, the Castlemore, which would land the drugs on the Irish coast. But this time their plans were thwarted by more natural means.
A storm hit, causing the trawler to run aground, and the cargo was lost.
Sources say Monaghan organised the trawler operation on the receiving end – and that Irish crime lord Daniel Kinahan wanted paying regardless.
Nineteen months after the Castlemore ran aground, Monaghan and Eddie Lyons Jr were dead in a beachfront bar.
Whether Fuengirola was purely a Daniel gang operation, a €157 million debt being collected through subcontractors, or some combination of both is one of the central questions Spanish investigators want to put to Steven Lyons.
He is the one person in custody who would know.
More than 200 torture photos – and nobody knows who the victims are
Raids on a Fuengirola property linked to the Lyons network turned up more than 200 photographs depicting torture and murder, with the victims remaining unidentified.
Guardia Civil detectives believe the images were taken in Scotland, based on details visible in the backgrounds.
Police Scotland, the Guardia Civil and the DEA are all working to identify the people shown. Lyons is the man most likely to be able to name them.
The €50 million money laundering empire
The Guardia Civil estimates Lyons laundered between €30 million and €50 million through Costa del Sol front businesses including bars, a Glasgow-registered vodka brand called Nero Drinks that launched on the Costa del Sol, car rental firms and a minigolf venture.
Investigators believe they were cleaning €350,000 at its peak day over 18 months, routed through shell companies in Spain, the UAE and Turkey.
The central figure connecting the money to the Kinahan cartel is Johnny Morrissey, 66, a US Treasury-designated Kinahan figure whose wife Nicola’s name appeared on the Nero Drinks registration.
His 2022 Marbella arrest, sources say, directly triggered the investigation into Lyons. He remains on €60,000 bail.
Many cartel associates might be getting nervous about Lyons being interrogated on these matters.
Convicted Kinahan hitman James Quinn is currently serving 22 years in Spain for the 2015 murder of Gary Hutch, and could end up in the same prison as Lyons.
It is said to be the reason Lyons is seeking placement in a lower-security facility rather than Alhaurin de la Torre, the high-security Malaga prison where Riley is currently held.
The ‘Super Cartel‘
Perhaps the greatest question of all is what Lyons might – or might not – say about the inner workings of the now notorious ‘super cartel’, in which some of the biggest drug traffickers on the planet decided to work together pooling their capital to move ever larger shipments.
Hundreds of kilograms of cocaine moved into the UK through Lyons’ network.
The DEA joined the investigation because of his ties to the Kinahan cartel, which sits at the heart of the super cartel.
Lyons built his relationship with Daniel Kinahan on the Costa del Sol in the mid-2010s, becoming a senior partner in this organisation, which investigators have identified as being an alliance between the Kinahan organisation, Bosnian-Dutch trafficker Edin Gacanin, Italian boss Raffaele Imperiale and Mocro Mafia founder Ridouan Taghi.
All four were photographed at Kinahan’s Dubai wedding in 2017.
But Kinahan was arrested in April this year, and as of June 2026, every one of them is gone.
Taghi was convicted in the Netherlands. Gacanin was jailed for seven years.
The alliance that once controlled cocaine supply chains from Rotterdam to the Costa del Sol has effectively ceased to function as a unit.
With Kinahan in a Dubai cell awaiting extradition to Ireland, Taghi, Gacanin and Imperiale all gone, those who remain are operating independently.
“It’s every cartel for themselves now that Daniel Kinahan is out of the loop,” one source said – meaning that more violence is expected.
The Mocro Mafia’s Spanish operations have passed to Joseph Leijdekkers – Bolle Jos or ‘Chubby Jos’ in English – a Dutch trafficker now believed to be hiding in Sierra Leone under the alias Omar Sheriff, with Dutch authorities offering a €200,000 reward.
His brother was arrested in Turkey in connection with Spain’s record 30-tonne cocaine seizure from the cargo ship Arconian earlier this year. The cocaine took 51 hours to incinerate.
Lyons is now the most senior figure from that network sitting in a Spanish jail — the one man with direct knowledge of how the whole operation worked.
Whether he talks is the question his former allies appear desperate to answer before he does.
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