POLICE in Spain have arrested a Cheltenham man after smashing an alleged international drug ring making illegal sex stimulants.
Scott Boote, 39, is being held after being picked up by National Police in the Costa Del Sol.
Officers have also confiscated a haul of the drugs with a street value put at almost £3 million.
Also facing questions alongside Boote is fellow Briton, 72-year-old Derek Hughes, from Liverpool.
Police say they believe the pair are part of a gang of eight making the sex drugs without any medical or health controls before selling them on the internet.
Five Spaniards and a Swiss woman are also being held for questioning.
According to detectives, the group had been living in the lap of luxury.
The officers said they had been using tax havens around the globe as well as buying property and cars to hide the money being made from the venture. Police have blocked bank accounts as they seized 110,000 doses of anabolic drugs alongside property and vehicles worth an estimated 3.5 million euros (£2.9 million).
A spokesman for the Spanish police said: "All the members (of the gang) had a high standard of living and acquired numerous properties, luxury cars and property abroad, some in tax havens like Panama, to hinder any type of asset tracking." The sexual enhancers can be made for both men and women.
The police say the drugs were being sold on the internet to customers around the world from the gang's base in Malaga and ingredients for the aphrodisiacs were bought across to the factories in Torremolinos and Coin after being purchased in spots around the world, including the UK, America, Malaysia and Thailand.
Three factories were set up in the popular Costa del Sol resorts to produce the drugs, the police said. But officers believe those making the drugs had no medical knowledge of how to produce the sex stimulants safely.
The arrests took place in Torremolinos and Coin.
Officers believe the gang had created a series of legitimate businesses around the world in order to hide their criminal activities.
They are looking into whether other gang members living in countries outside of Spain had been contacted.
"Their activities and the profits were masked by commercial companies, seeking to give an appearance of legality to illegal activities," the spokesman added.
Alongside the drugs, officers found boxes ready to be labelled and sent out to buyers.
The spokesman said: "Among the seized 110,000 doses of substances were anabolic steroids and illegal drugs used primarily as enhancers. Officers also located countless cardboard packages of the products, labels and leaflets to be affixed to containers."
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