OLIVE PRESS
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GIBRALTAR
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Vol. 8 Issue 224 www.theolivepress.es May 29th - June 11th 2024
Balban behind bars FORMER Natwest employee Gillian Balban has been sentenced to seven and a half years in jail. It comes after she was found guilty of four counts of fraud and false accounting. The case marks Gibraltar’s longest criminal trial with a jury in the last 20 years. Tried at the Supreme Court, Balban was accused of fraud and false accounting between 2011, and 2017, worth £2.7 million. The 51-year-old is alleged to have run up €600,000 worth of IOU’s and covered up a £2 million black hole in the bank’s Corral Road cash reserves. Under cross examination Balban admitted that she requested thousands of pounds in cash from the bank, to cover the wages of employees at her former restaurant Casa Brachetto.
Accounts
She said this would have been recorded in the restaurant’s accounts - but she confirmed that this did not seem to have happened. Balban claims that the £2 million hole in the bank’s cash reserves is due to a software migration, saying that such issues were common. However, the issue remained nine months after she was made redundant in 2017, leading staff to realised Balban was at the heart of the problem. Taking into account the bank dividends to cover up IOU’s and the discrepancy in cash reserves, the total loss was £2.7 million. Many bank employees resigned following Balban’s actions, claiming she ‘ruined their lives’. A Natwest spokesperson said: “We are pleased to see the case reach a conclusion after working closely with the authorities and want to thank all those involved in helping bring the matter to an end.”
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Walking to victory THE Gibraltar over 60s walking football squad has triumphed at the first ever UEFA Walking Football Cup. They beat England 3-2 to be crowned champions in Nyon, Switzerland. The squad also beat Portugal and Sweden in the pilot tournament. Minister for Sport, the Hon Leslie Bruzon congratulated the team, saying: “This is fantastic news and shows that Gibraltar is ably represented across many sports and categories”. Meanwhile, it has been revealed that Europa Point Stadium will host multiple UEFA events this year. They will include the Nations League, Champions League Qualifiers (first, second and third rounds) and Conference League Qualifiers (first, second and third rounds). All three events are subject to the Gibraltar FA funded infrastructural improvements currently underway at the stadium being completed.
Eye on the Rock!
Gibraltar ‘will be attacked’ if UK weapons used on Russian territory by Ukraine By Laurence Dollimore
RUSSIA has warned it ‘will not hesitate’ to attack Gibraltar if Ukraine uses British weapons in its territory. The threat came from Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She told reporters that British enclaves would find themselves in the firing line, both ‘within Ukraine and beyond its borders’, if UK weaponry is found to have been used on Russian soil. Zakharova specified that such enclaves include military bases inside the war zone, as well as military installations in Gibraltar, the Falkland Islands and Africa. It comes after Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Cameron said Ukraine’s military had the right to use UK-supplied weapons to attack targets in its interior. The comment infuriated Putin and his government cited it as one of the reasons why he chose to conduct exercises simulating the launch of tactical nuclear missiles this month. Putin and his cronies believe London is becoming increasingly involved in the conflict. But any attack by the dictator on British targets could trigger a direct military
TARGET?: HMS Diamond, while left, Zakharova, Cameron and Putin
response from the UK and its NATO allies, including Spain. It would drag much of Europe and the US into a complex, region-wide conflict. In a military report last year, the UK said Gibraltar was one of its five most important strategic outposts. It said the territory can ‘act as a springboard’ for Britain to project its power throughout the world, branding it ‘essential’ in combating ‘current
and future threats.’ The Ministry of Defense employs 952 people on the Rock of whom 528 are local, the rest are military and civilians based in the UK. Royal Navy ships, RAF aircraft and other units temporarily deployed there for training routinely visit Gibraltar.
Houthis
In addition, the destroyer HMS Diamond is regularly rearmed at GIB’s naval base with Sea Viper missiles between combat missions against the Houthis in the Red Sea In 2022, 79 naval ships docked and 117 military aircraft visited the Rock, with 2,000 to 3,000 soldiers deployed each year mainly on training missions.