SPAIN’S most infamous spy came back from the dead yesterday, six years after his family published a death notice and paid monks to pray for his soul.

Francisco Paesa, an arms dealer and spy who is credited with dealing Eta, the Basque terrorist group, a severe blow, was tracked down in Paris after seven years on the run. Spain is expected to seek his extradition to face corruption charges.

In what could have been a chapter from the pages of an Ian Fleming novel, Señor Paesa faked his death and remained one step ahead of the law. He supposedly died of a heart attack in Thailand in 1998; a year later his family lodged a death certificate at a Spanish court.

His suspicious “death” was thought to have ended a tale of espionage, double-crossing and high living spanning more than 20 years. Suave and good- looking, Señor Paesa became a multimillionaire while arranging a successful operation against Eta in 1986.

Señor Paesa was first tracked down by British and Mexican private detective firms acting for a client who claimed to have been defrauded by him. They caught up with him in Luxembourg, living under the name of Francisco Pando. He had a young girlfriend and an Argentine passport that gave his age as 54, rather than 68, it was reported; but he gave the detectives the slip.

While working for the Spanish secret services, he sold the Basque terrorists missiles fitted with radio transmitters so that they could be tracked, leading to some important arrests.

In another sting, Señor Paesa double crossed Luis Roldán, the corrupt former head of the Spanish Guardia Civil, who was found and imprisoned.

Señor Paesa is believed to have first helped Roldán to flee Spain, then helped him to move money around the world. Then, he sold him out to Spanish police, for about €1.47 million (£1 million).

Roldán, who was jailed in 1999 for misappropriation of public funds, was involved in one of the scandals within the Spanish Interior Ministry that led to the fall of the Government of Felipe González, the former Socialist Prime Min-ister, in 1996. Members of that government were involved in a “dirty war” against Eta, in which mercenaries were recruited by high-ranking police to fight the terrorists.

Spanish authorities were not fooled by claims of Señor Paesa’s death in Bangkok and believed that he had run off with part of the €11.8 million that was stolen by Roldán.

Yesterday Señor Paesa’s past finally caught up with him when he was confronted at a café in Paris by journalists from Interviú, the Spanish investigative magazine. Still impeccably dressed in a dark coat and smart hat, Señor Paesa, 68, cut a figure not unlike the one he projected before he “died”.

He claimed to have returned all the money that Roldán had stolen and he calmly explained away his death as a “misunderstanding”.

He said: “There was a shoot-out in Bangkok in which three people died and they mistakenly thought I had died. If you want, I can show you my scars.”

Señor Paesa claimed to be on the run from the Russian mafia and told the journalists: “If you publish those photographs, you will sink me. I will have to shoot myself. My life has reached rock bottom.”