Brit grandad facing extradition over £60m Tenerife timeshare con pleads.. I DON’T WANT TO DIE IN JAIL
A GRANDAD who faces extradition from Britain over a gang’s £60million timeshare con has pleaded: “Don’t let me die in a Spanish prison.”
A UK court has ordered Paul Blanchard, 75, to face justice in Spain where he is accused of being part of a mafia-style mob led by Mohamed Derbah.
Derbah allegedly used to be an enforcer for gunned down gangster John “Goldfinger” Palmer, who stood trial for the 1983 Brink’s-mat gold heist.
Blanchard says he is innocent and that he was helping to expose the timeshare scam, which hit thousands of Brits, as well as working for Spanish secret services fighting terror.
Never
Now he faces up to 15 years in jail if found guilty.
He told the Sunday People: “I don’t want to die in prison. I’ve had a heart attack and I have heart disease. If extradited I may never come back.
“I’m gobsmacked a judge has ruled I should be extradited. I contacted police because I found wrongdoing. I thought I was doing the right thing – helping stop criminality.”
This week a court here accepted he was a voluntary witness but heard Spanish police had not assured him he would not be prosecuted.
Spanish prosecutors said Blanchard “was aware that he had been involved in criminal activity and that he might receive some kind of procedural benefit for cooperating with the investigation”.
Blanchard can appeal but could be extradited to Spain within 17 days.
He said: “Spain has lied throughout this case against me. Yet they say I would receive a fair trial if extradited. I have a cat in hell’s chance of receiving a fair trial in Spain.”
Palmer swindled millions out of tourists who dreamed of holiday homes in the Canary Isles. He and Derbah fell out in the 90s sparking a bloody turf war. Derbah set up a rival gang and, according to Blanchard, paid him £60,000 for financial advice over two years.
Blanchard claims he thought it was a “legitimate business” but offered his assistance to Spanish authorities when they began suspecting Lebaneseborn
Derbah of funding militant group Hezbollah. Derbah was arrested in 2001 on suspicion of money laundering but has not been prosecuted.
Blanchard agreed to give evidence but never did because in 2008 he was jailed here for six and a half years after admitting passport fraud, laundering £375,000 and trying to steal £4.3million from a London bank and transfer it to Spain.
He told Sheffield crown court he was secretly monitoring the movement of cash for Spanish agents and tipped them off about a terror network funded from the UK months before al-qaeda’s 2004 train bomb in Madrid that killed 193 people.
But Blanchard, of Fulford, North Yorks, said Spain refused to confirm this to the judge.
In 2018 a European Arrest Warrant from a Spanish judge called Blanchard the “financial adviser” behind Derbah’s network, hired for his offshore banking expertise and his knowhow for laundering millions.
It said the gang used “typical mafia techniques” including “threats, extortion and settling of scores” to launder cash, forge credit cards and pervert the course of justice.