Laurence Dollimore
BRITAIN’S most-wanted fugitive has evaded cops in Geneva.
Mark Acklom, who was thought to be hiding out in Spain, was spotted at a cafe in the Swiss capital, but by the time the police arrived he had vanished.
Acklom, 45, was last tracked down to Murcia by the Olive Press, where we discovered his wife runs a property business.
He is wanted by Avon and Somerset Police in the UK for allegedly defrauding fiancee Carolyn Woods of all her £850,000 (€960,000) life savings in Gloucestershire four years ago.
He was jailed for fraud in Spain two years ago but was released early before running back to the UK to evade a European Arrest Warrant.
Since last October, Acklom has been on the National Crime Agency’s 10 most-wanted fugitives list.
Acklom was photographed three weeks ago chatting over coffee with an unknown man outside a cafe close to the centre of Geneva.
According to Sky News, an alleged victim snapped the photo after happening upon him by chance.
The National Crime Agency is now investigating the sighting.
Alleged victim Woods said: “I’m not really surprised that he’s sitting openly in public because he is supremely arrogant and probably feels invincible – not surprising bearing in mind he has slipped through the net so easily on numerous occasions before.
“I do not feel at all surprised that the authorities still haven’t caught him. I was hopeful when he was named as one of the 10 most-wanted fugitives that efforts would be stepped up to find him and arrest him, but very little seems to have been done since then, and he has obviously been moving easily from one country to the next.
“My faith in the authorities is virtually non-existent.”
Switzerland is not an EU member and does not recognise the European Arrest Warrant, though it does have an extradition agreement with the UK.
