Walter Finch
A BRITISH accountant and ‘undercover agent’ claims he is once again facing extradition to Spain in order to ‘silence’ him.
Paul Blanchard, 79, from York, alleges that he provided Spanish authorities with ‘intelligence that would have prevented the Madrid and the London 7/7 bombings.’
Spanish authorities accuse him of working as a ‘financial advisor’ for criminal gangs and are seeking his capture for what he knows about their inner workings.
But the Yorkshireman believes they want to put him in a Spanish jail to avoid embarrassment at not acting on the intelligence he provided.
A total of 243 people died in the London bombings on July 7, 2005 and the Madrid train bombings on March 11, 2004. It includes 52 victims in London and 191 victims in Madrid.
A European Arrest Warrant (EAW) was issued in 2018 after Blanchard was accused of financially aiding crooks from 1999 and 2001.
The money laundering expert, who was convicted of fraud in 2006, managed to dodge extradition to Spain in 2021 after a British judge ruled the EAW was ‘incoherent and defective.’
Blanchard claims that information he voluntarily offered up in 2001 on the gangs’ operations is being used against him.
According to the York Press, Blanchard dished the details on some Canary Islands criminality without a lawyer or interpreter being present.
But two new dates for an extradition hearing will take place in Westminster Magistrate Court next month as Spanish authorities once again seek their man.
Blanchard claims that, while working as an accountant for an alleged Tenerife kingpin called Mohamed Derbah in 2001, he alerted Spanish police to a timeshare fraud being used to launder money.
He then allegedly went undercover for the Spanish authorities and provided them with the evidence that helped them launch a prosecution against the Lebanese-born businessman.
However, when his ‘cover was blown’ in 2004, he fled back to England, where he was subsequently arrested on separate charges.
The storied accountant was jailed for six years six months in the UK in 2006 after pleading guilty to passport fraud, laundering £375,000 and trying to steal £4.3m from a London bank and transfer it to Spain. He was released on licence in 2010.
The Spanish authorities, Blanchard alleges, had refused to confirm to their British counterparts that he was working for them as an informant.
Meanwhile, those same Spanish bosses in 2008 changed his legal status in the Derbah investigation from prosecution witness to co-defendant.
The Spanish High Court overturned the indictment the following year, but his persecutors did not give up and made further attempts to grill him for information in 2010 and 2016.
UK authorities told the Spanish that Blanchard had refused to answer their questions, stating only he had worked as an undercover agent for Spanish police.
