THE operation to dismantle the Lyons clan on the Costa del Sol followed from the arrest of Kinahan cartel banker Johnny Morrissey in Marbella four years ago, Spanish police sources have revealed.
Morrissey, 66, a British-born Irish passport holder and former Rochdale doorman who spent two decades building a life — and allegedly a criminal empire — on the Costa del Sol, was arrested in a dawn raid on September 12, 2022, at an apartment near Marbella.
His Glasgow-born wife Nicola was taken at the same time.
Sources have said the investigations which led to Morrissey’s arrest and 14 arrests across four countries last week were ‘intrinsically linked’.
READ MORE: Who is Ian Hollis, the former Costa del Sol bar owner arrested by Spanish police in operation to take down Scotland’s feared Lyons crime gang?
“Operation Armorum [against the Lyons clan] comes from Operation Whitewall,” Scotland’s Daily Record reported one source as saying.
“A lot of information about the Lyons gang came from the intelligence investigators got from the operation against Morrissey.”
Six months before his arrest, the US Treasury had named Morrissey as one of seven key members of the Kinahan cartel, designating him as a former enforcer who had graduated to organising international drug shipments from South America and laundering the proceeds.
Investigators believe he helped criminal organisations launder up to €350,000 a day over the 18 months their investigation lasted, using a company called Nero Drinks — a Glasgow-registered vodka brand run in his wife Nicola’s name — as cover.
The money was passed through the informal hawala transfer system, which is a trust-based network of brokers operating outside conventional banking.
The US Treasury, which sanctioned Nero Drinks in April 2022, alleged Morrissey had given a significant stake in the business to cartel head Daniel Kinahan as compensation for seized drug shipments, with Nicola acting as a ‘frontperson for his interests’.
When Guardia Civil officers raided the couple’s Mijas apartment in 2022, they also found a series of notebooks recording hundreds of cash transactions with dozens of local businesses.
The records were transferred to Madrid, where investigators said they would ‘spawn many more arrests’.
But Morrissey, sources now say, was not simply the Kinahans’ banker.
“It wasn’t just the Kinahans he allegedly assisted,” one source said, with mmong those he also allegedly served being Steven Lyons.
“Morrissey and Steven Lyons relied on each other’s services,” the source added.
That relationship, and the intelligence gathered around it, would prove fatal to the Lyons operation.
The Guardia Civil last week described the Lyons clan as a ‘highly sophisticated criminal organisation characterised by violence’ as it announced the results of Operation Armorum, which was three years in the making.
Lyons was arrested in Bali two weeks ago, transferred to the Netherlands, and detained in Amsterdam under a European Arrest Warrant issued by Spanish authorities.
His wife Amanda, 38, was taken at Dubai airport. In total, 14 people were arrested across Spain, Scotland, Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates.
Eighteen property searches were carried out in Spain, concentrated in Fuengirola and Mijas on the Costa del Sol and in Barcelona, with investigators seizing cash, electronic devices, luxury watches and cryptocurrency wallets.
A number of well-known Costa del Sol characters were caught up in the raids, which took place mainly in the Calahonda area, including bar manager Ian Hollis.
Police estimate the clan laundered more than €30 million through front companies including a food and drinks firm and a car rental business.
Lyons now faces extradition to Spain to appear before a judge in Malaga on suspicion of money laundering and membership of a criminal organisation.
READ MORE: Scottish mob war pulls in Europe’s cocaine cartels on the Costa del Sol as mafia boss ‘vows revenge’
Both operations were made possible in large part by EncroChat, the encrypted communications platform infiltrated by European law enforcement between March and June 2020.
Real-time access to messages exchanged on the platform gave investigators a window into the operational and financial structures of multiple criminal organisations, and the intelligence gathered proved decisive in both Whitewall and Armorum.
Morrissey himself remains in legal limbo.
Released on bail in June 2024 after paying €60,000, he has not yet been told whether he will face formal charges.
Sources close to the case describe the investigation as ‘complex’ with ‘international ramifications’ – a reference in part to the fact that investigators have sought cooperation from Dubai, where the Kinahan family is sheltering and where Lyons himself lived for several years before his move to the Far East.
A letter rogatory – a formal request for judicial assistance – was sent to Dubai authorities.
As of late 2024, no response had been received.
Both Morrissey and Lyons are linked to one of the most significant criminal ecosystems ever established on the Costa del Sol.
The region has long served as a base for British and Irish organised crime, offering proximity to drug supply routes, a large expat community, and a lifestyle that made wealth easy to display and hard to question.
That era, investigators suggest, is coming to an end.
Click here to read more Crime & Law News from The Olive Press.