Robert Firth
HE liked to boast of his huge charity prowess, his millions made and his ability to train any type of dog.
But most people who knew him will remember David ‘the Dogman’ Klein as a trickster, who got away with far too many scams.
The notorious Euro Weekly News columnist – who had his first brush with the law when he impersonated a police officer as a teenager – passed away last week allegedly embroiled in a €1 million-plus tax avoidance probe.
As the Olive Press reported on a number of occasions Klein, who also had a radio show on Talk Radio Europe, had been flogging dodgy international driving licences for decades.
But, even worse, it has since emerged he hadn’t been declaring the income to the Spanish tax authorities.
Now, in a remarkable beyond-the-grave tale, we can reveal how his daughter and son-in-law reported him to Spain’s Hacienda earlier this year, ‘to make him pay for his evil ways’.
Based in the UK, they were horrified to discover that Klein had used a Spanish bank account in his daughter’s name to launder the money he made from the €450 Taiwan-made international driving permits.
“We denounced him to both the bank and the taxman, but the case has been going very slowly,” son-in-law Conway Standing, told the Olive Press, adding how frustrating it was that he had died before it was concluded.
“I wanted to publish it all when he was alive. What’s the point now that he’s dead,” he said.
The Derby-based businessman, 66, revealed earlier this year how the bank had been using ‘delaying tactics’ but that both it and Klein were facing severe penalties for it.
He added that he had a ‘detailed and highly itemised account of Klein’s undeclared offshore accounts and his undeclared income’.
He insisted: “Basically there is a tsunami of stress approaching Klein at an alarming pace.
“Klein is a hypocrite and obviously has scant regard for the law but that won’t stop him being apprehended.”
The astonishing claims were last night backed up by Costa del Sol motoring expert Brian Deller, who was helping Standing in the tax probe.
Deller, 82, who had previously been involved in a legal battle with Klein, after he hacked his website and redirected it to his own, said: “We are talking a million pounds at least. Money laundering. He really was a crook.
“But like most conmen he was believable,” he added.
He had taken Klein to task, via the Olive Press and his own website, describing the fake licences as ‘plasticated’ and containing ‘really bad Spanish.’
Law expert Antonio Flores, of Lawbird, in Marbella, described the international permits as ‘a scam, a sham.’
“Driving permits are issued by government offices,” he said.
As for where the money went, according to Deller, it mostly went into his luxury lifestyle, that once included Rolls Royces and other luxury cars.
He also had a stunning villa in upmarket Guadalmina, where he lived with his long-suffering wife Susan, a grand piano and his dog nicknamed ‘black boy’.
The former dog trainer is no stranger to the criminal world, having first appeared in court at the age of 17 on charges of impersonating a police officer to con a female driver out of money.
Reported in the Times, in 1954, he was convicted and fined 13 pounds.
He went on to have various other brushes with the law in the UK, before moving to Spain in the 1990s.
One long time expat, whose father also took Klein to court, said that the conman had made many enemies throughout the 90s.
“He pissed off a lot of people,” he said. “He did lots of damage to a lot of people. I’d rather not say any more.”
Klein died of pneumonia linked to cancer he had been suffering on November 29, in Malaga
