A LEADING expat charity boss has been accused of syphoning off her family’s inheritance and then cutting off all contact after the death of their mother.
Marie Gleeson, who runs Age Concern Estepona and Manilva (ACE), was branded a ‘scoundrel’ by her own sister after their 91-year-old mother Catherine died in February, 2021.
Gleeson, 60, originally from Liverpool, has long been recognised for her charity work on the Costa del Sol.
The UK’s ambassador Alex Ellis even shook her hand as she was described as leading a ‘key organisation supporting British nationals’ in Estepona last month.
But her sister, Annette Fisher, claims Gleeson leads a double life that belies her image as an upstanding pillar of society.
According to Annette, a school librarian based in Norwich, someone transferred almost all the money out of their mother’s bank account just days after she died.
She said it left the family without any inheritance whatsoever, despite a 2018 will stipulating that Catherine’s money and possessions should be divided equally between the two sisters, plus the children of another sister Denise, who died in 2016.
On the day Catherine died there was only €30,372 left in the account.
But within three days, €26,000 of this sum was transferred away – including €1,000 withdrawn in cash.
The family also knew that around €80,000 was put into Catherine’s BBVA account between 2019 – when she moved to Spain – and 2021, including the proceeds of a property sale in the UK.
The Olive Press has seen bank records verifying these claims. And the family claim Gleeson was the only other person known to have access to her mother’s account.
These mysterious transfers reduced Annette and her family’s rightful inheritance down to a pittance.
And in the end they would never even see a penny of that, as Catherine’s account continued to be mysteriously drained until it was emptied entirely in June 2022 – 16 months after her death.
“My sister leached money out of the account for a year before mum died,” Annette told the Olive Press this week.
“There’s hardly a day when she didn’t buy something – makeup, perfume, household appliances, some art shop she liked.
“I really don’t believe it was my mother’s purchases. She was wheelchair bound and very frail.
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“Marie was the co-signatory of that account. Only she could have taken that money.
“By my mother’s death, there was just a fraction left, which my sister finally moved.
“I don’t know where and it’s a massive betrayal of trust to move money from a dead person’s account.”
But Gleeson’s alleged activities didn’t come as a huge surprise to Annette.
“Marie’s just trouble,” she continued.
“There is always a long history of disgruntled people behind her.”
The librarian insisted that Gleeson had a track record of associating with unsavoury characters prior to securing control of Age Concern, including during a stint in Hong Kong.
“She can be very personable, very entertaining – a huge character. But she’s just got her own version of the truth, which is not the truth at all.”
Her frail and infirm mother, Catherine, had initially come to live out her final years with her in the Spanish sunshine in 2019, they claim, around the same time Gleeson was voted in as president of ACE.
As part of her carer duties, Marie became not just co-signee on her mother’s bank account, but also the unofficial guardian of her belongings.
However, Catherine’s will specifically stipulated that Annette should receive her most precious heirloom – a seven-diamond ring her father had given her mother which had been ‘especially cleaned ready to pass on to me’.
But it never materialised, nor jewellery intended for their niece, Grace.
“Marie just kept everything because she felt she had the right to,” Annette claimed.
To add insult to injury, the family told the Olive Press that Gleeson arranged for Catherine’s cremation and funeral just 24 hours after her passing, making it impossible for them to attend.
Meanwhile, Annette had to learn of her mother’s passing from her brother-in-law, Stephen Capper, who was executor on Catherine’s will.
Once Capper started trying to organise the inheritance with Gleeson, he told the Olive Press, this week, that her communications soon dwindled down until ‘she stopped replying altogether’, leaving the family helpless and clueless.
Catherine’s passing had not come as a complete surprise for the family.
Gleeson had previously taken her mother off medication prescribed by British doctors and, despite their disagreement, instead took her to a herbalist, according to Annette.
“After that, my mother became confused and disoriented. She didn’t make sense on the phone anymore,” she continued.
“She was not getting proper medication or hydration.
When Annette and her family tried to call Catherine on speakerphone on her birthday on January 26 – just a week before her death – ‘Marie just told us to f*** off.’
“Those were her exact words,” Annette insisted. “She isolated her.”
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After bringing in lawyers, Annette soon discovered that the case was a ‘criminal, not civil case’.
The family have not yet filed an official criminal complaint against Gleeson, in part because they don’t ‘want her to go to prison’.
“If we were in the same country, it might be different,” continued Annette. “It would be easier and Marie knows how to play the system in Spain inside out.”
Gleeson has long been dogged by allegations of impropriety relating to her running of ACE, where she holds the conflicting roles of not just president but also treasurer.
Several whistleblowers approached the Olive Press in 2023 to reveal that three members of the executive committee had resigned over allegations of bullying and a lack of financial transparency from Gleeson.
Before we published the story, she denied everything while friends later claimed it was ‘a smear campaign’.
When the Olive Press put the new allegations to Gleeson this month in a series of emails that quizzed on what had happened to Catherine’s money after she died, she failed to respond to them.
However, bizarrely, she later defended herself on Facebook, insisting the clothes and make up were not for her and dismissing Annette as an ‘extremely angry sister’ who she hadn’t seen ‘since 1996’.
She claimed that Annette ‘tried to sell [mum’s] flat in the UK without her knowledge’ and that the family ‘never visited me or mum once, not even for her funeral or for her 85th, 86th, 87th, 89th, 90th, 91st, 92nd birthdays’.
“But they did have time to go on luxury holidays in the same period to America, Mexico, Moscow, Paris, Australia and Madrid.
“When I called them to say she had passed at 92 years old (ED: Actually she passed at 91), the very first question was about jewellery,” Gleeson wrote.
“I asked mum once how she put up with the fake family dynamic, she said ‘well I pretend to like them and they pretend to like me and that’s how it works’.”
Annette responded insisting these comments were ‘entirely untrue’, and that Catherine was only living in Spain for two years.
“And during that time let’s not forget we were unable to visit due to Covid restrictions,” she said, adding she had not had a holiday ‘for 20 years’.
Gleeson wrote just hours before we went to press this week that she will reply after we have published.
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