From The Digital Editor
Walter Finch
Dear Olive Press readers,
Another week is behind us, the weather is inching warmer, and it means I have another week of current events in Spain to round up for you.
It’s been another seven days of scandal and fraud in Spain, and the Olive Press is never one to shy away from exposing it.
We revealed this week that the chickens are finally coming home to roost for the high-flying mayor – and self-proclaimed ‘king’ – of Estepona, Jose Garcia Urbano. He will be tried by a jury next month.
Famed for building the Malaga province up into a foreign property buyer’s haven, it turns out that his reign has been characterised by abuses and impunity which are finally coming to light through allegations made against him by a local policeman and his ex-wife.
Apparently Urbano took the wife as his lover and kept her in an all-expenses paid beachside apartment and even, crucially, paid her over €3k a month to do a bogus job with the town hall. Now it’s all coming out and a jury will decide his fate.
Meanwhile, more has been coming to light in the Continental Wealth Management swindle that left hundreds of pensioners with an uncertain future in old age.
After we reported that one of the architects, Jody Smart, has been sentenced to jail for fraud, her ex-boyfriend and business partner, Darren Kirby, gave us an exclusive interview to tell his side of the story.
Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t a mea culpa and he claims he is innocent of fraud. He went into much greater detail into the workings of how the ‘independent offshore investment company’ collapsed and destroyed the pension of hundreds of mostly British expats in 2017.
We will be releasing further details of Kirby’s story in the weeks to come. We also did a deep dive into Jody’s role in the atrocious fraud and how she came out of it very well – apart from going to jail.
We reported on the ongoing some-might-call-it David versus Goliath confrontation between a law firm and the Spanish tax office. The lawyers are claiming that the taxman is unfairly targeting wealthy expat residents who take advantage of Spain’s Beckham Law. The tax office denied it and the lawyers came back and denied the denial. This one will go on and on.
This particular crown seems to be shifting all the time, but the newest best place to retire in Spain has been announced. It’s the seaside town of Almeñucar in Granada.
A long-awaited trial into the activities of the Swedish mafia in the Costa del Sol finally went ahead in Madrid this week. All eyes are following it as one of the accused ring leaders of the gang, connected to the feared mocro mafia, is none other than Joakim Broberg, the step-son the mayor of Marbella.
This is the same character who boasted ‘we own Marbella, Andalucia is ours’ on a wiretap in 2019.
The latest Blue Flags report arrived this week, placing Spain number one worldwide for having the best beaches in the world. Malaga and even Sotogrande came out well.
There was a lot of interest in a Russian tennis player who made headlines where he got himself disqualified for telling the judge to ‘blow me’. He also grabbed his crotch during the match in Sabadell. So that was the end of him.
The property news continues to tell the same story – the market is still breaking records and Brits are the number one foreign buyers.
And in honour of VE day this week, we recounted the tale of how Spanish troops, known as the Republican exiles of ‘La Nueve’, were the first Allied unit to enter Paris upon its liberation in 1944. A little-known but highly interesting little fact.
I’ll leave it there for now. We publish dozens of news stories a day, this is just a tiny snapshot of the output between our team of up to seven journalists.
Walt
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