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Estepona is flourishing and the tourists are flocking to the Garden City
Estepona
guide An independent 16-page the Town Hall NOT sponsored by May 2024
new pedestrianised GREEN LUNG: The beach paseo boulevard is a shady
GARDENOPOLIS
into over the last decadeSol… Estepona has morphed of the Costa del the veritable Garden more to come, writes and there’s resident Walter Finch
J
UST when it seemed Estepona had reached , its final transformation developments even more grand car parks, have been announced. half a dozen new skyscraper, now Not content with stadium and park and mega-park.notary an art gallery, athletics a brand new retail since a former the town is to get decade of change It has been a genuine on the west2011. relaxed backwater became mayor in metropolis, one been a sleepy, What had then has now turned into a genuine ern Costa del SolMarbella. was the almost rivalling for themselves: Last year, Estepona The facts speak on next page
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THE McGrail Inquiry is heading into its final furlong with key players shedding light on events surrounding the police chief’s retirement - but the biggest testimony is yet to come. Gibraltar’s Chief Minister Fabian Picardo will take the stand next week with a number of questions to answer after nearly four weeks of ‘I cannot recall’ responses from witnesses. The inquiry saw Attorney General Michael Llamas (right) discomforted last week under intense cross examination from barristers representing both McGrail and former Superintendent Paul Richardson. Llamas admitted ‘in hindsight’ he failed to advise Picardo not to involve himself in a police operation that concerned his own
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Memory error By Walter Finch at the McGrail Inquiry
business interests. It was also heard that the Attorney General called the Royal Gibraltar Police ‘clowns’ and McGrail ‘a bull in a china shop’ in their efforts to carry out a search warrant against Hassan senior partner James Levy. Levy himself came under heavy questioning in the second week regarding his
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missing communications with the Chief Minister. He told the inquiry that his phone had ‘collapsed’, while his lawyer Lewis Baglietto said he had ‘routinely’ deleted those communications in 2021. Even Picardo has failed to hand over his Whatsapps with Levy. Efforts to paint the Chief Minister as party to a conspiracy have fallen flat, however. Picardo (right) ultimately decided not to transfer the government contract at the heart of the inquiry to a company he had an interest in. Meanwhile, McGrail’s police daybook, desktop computer, laptop and documents have not been handed over either.
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GIBRALTAR is fuming after being accused of helping Russian war criminals avoid international sanctions. The accusation was made late last month when Brussels voted to keep the British territory on the EU’s watchlist for money laundering and terrorism finance. The Rock was one of several jurisdictions deemed to have ‘strategic deficiencies’ in tackling the serious financial crimes - alongside the UAE, Uganda, Barbados and Panama. Among the concerns were ‘lacking
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Gibraltar labels money laundering claims as ‘baseless’ and ‘gratuitous’ By Yzabelle Bostyn
efforts in addressing, or even facilitating the evasion of sanctions imposed on Russia.’ The decision has been branded ‘baseless’ by the Gibraltar government, which accused Spanish figures with vested interests of being behind the move. It comes despite the fact that in February 2024, Gibraltar was removed from the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) ‘grey list’ after two years. It followed a period of ‘intense technical scrutiny and meticulous evaluation’, according to the Government of the British Overseas Territory. This included an in-person evaluation carried out by the FATF in December 2023. It is understood that the EU’s original decision to remove the Rock from their list took place after a consultation
with the European Commission's Expert Group on Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing. Despite at first defending the decision at the European Parliament's plenary session in Strasbourg, MEPs later voted against the removal. In a statement approved by the Parliament, it said there is ‘important and recent evidence’ suggesting the countries denied removal from the list ‘lack efforts in addressing, or even facilitate the evasion of, sanctions imposed on Russia’ and ‘may act as platforms for the circumvention of sanctions.’ It comes after Russia was subjected to EU, UK and US sanctions since its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Gibraltar has often been under scrutiny due to allegations it is a tax haven and ‘turns a blind eye’ to black market goods smuggling. Now, the Gibraltar Government has decried the vote saying it was ‘clearly not the result of any technical assessment’ and was the work of ‘hostile’ Spanish politicians. They singled out ‘actors’ from the Partido Popular, Vox and Ciudadanos, including Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo MEP (left). In a statement, Gibraltar authorities
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LIST: Between the Rock and a hard place as EU rejects proposal state they are ‘seriously concerned’ with the suggestion that ‘Gibraltar has facilitated the evasion of sanctions imposed on Russia’. They called the accusation ‘baseless, totally unsubstantiated and gratuitous’. “The Government will not allow Gibraltar’s good name to be remotely associated with efforts to support Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine and it will therefore be raising this claim at the highest political level,” the statement continued. They are now calling on the European Commission to reconsider its decision ‘promptly’. Some speculate EU politicians’ rejection of the removal is motivated by the tax break Spanish people working in Gibraltar would be given if it was taken off the list. Currently, Spanish people working overseas are exempt up to €60,100 in tax, but this rule does not apply to black listed territories like Gibraltar. If the Rock was removed from the
list, Spain would risk losing much tax income from Gibraltar’s Spanish workers. However, they assured the decision does not affect Gibraltar’s standing on the FATF list, nor its Brexit negotiations with the EU. UK MPs backed Gibraltar’s position, saying the EU’s statement was ‘completely inaccurate and unsubstantiated to suggest Gibraltar is undermining sanction efforts against Russia’.
Vox
They added that ‘UK sanctions apply in full and are enforced, in all UK overseas territories and crown dependencies.’ Spain’s right-wing party Vox also ruffled feathers after attempting to include a reference to Gibraltar as a ‘colony’ in the legal text. The term was rejected by the UK, who said it was an ‘outdated characterisation’.