Walter Finch
THE ghosts of the McGrail Inquiry continue to murmur.
An investigation into whether whistleblowers were ‘incentivised’ to give evidence against former Commissioner of Police Ian McGrail has been dropped.
It was handed off to former Northern Ireland Senior Investigating Officer (SIO) John McVea, and backed up by the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA).
On Thursday, September 26, it was announced that McVea’s investigation had not ‘uncovered any evidence that meets the threshold for criminal prosecution for Misconduct in Public Office.’
Meanwhile, on the same day, it was also announced that McVea had landed the position of Chief of Police for the Gibraltar Defence Police (GDP).
“The chess pieces are on the move,” a high-level Gibraltar source told the Olive Press.
In a statement, McGrail said: “The suggestion that there was witness inducement was not plucked from thin air but arose from high level official information that I had received from the RGP in early 2021 and which had been shared with the then Governor, Vice Admiral Sir David Steel.”
However, the former Commissioner of Police expressed his ‘satisfaction’ that the investigation had been carried out in a ‘thorough and serious’ manner.
But he remains ‘concerned that there were so many agreements entered into by the Chief Minister involving public money and positions, without legal authority.’
McGrail added that he expects these agreements to be investigated by the Principal Auditor.
The allegations of witness inducements, which came from McGrail himself, claimed RGP officers were being offered benefits to provide affidavits to this spring’s inquiry into the circumstances surrounding his early retirement.
Given the highly sensitive nature of the inquiry, which was examining allegations of ‘corruption at the highest levels of government’ within Gibraltar, the current RGP Commissioner Richard Ullger requested outside support from the UK, which came in the shape of McVea.
The Ulsterman, who had been working for the RGP as an independent senior investigator since February 2023, will now take over the GDP.
The two are not to be confused: the RGP is Gibraltar’s primary civilian police force, while the GDP is a specialised force primarily responsible for providing security and law enforcement at British military and Ministry of Defence (MoD) bases in Gibraltar.
