Walter Finch
AS a British pensioner loses his extradition battle to face a money-laundering trial, his claims of being a secret 007-style agent for Spain will come under the spotlight.
It sounds like a long-running spy novel series, each book more implausible.
But in the tortuous saga of British accountant Paul Blanchard, everything now depends on a panel of Appeal Court judges that his life is anything but fiction.
The stakes could not be higher for the 79-year-old Yorkshireman, who recently lost a High Court hearing against his extradition to Spain.
Accused of being the svengali behind an international money laundering scheme, his case is set to become one of the trials of the decade in Madrid and shed a light on his incredible connections to some of the world’s scariest mafia figures.
He came into contact with many – including former British Public Enemies John Palmer and Kenneth Noye – during his years spent living in Tenerife. That he is not denying.
But what he claims is that he was actually an undercover agent for Spanish intelligence, codenamed Isabella during his years on the island.
In a fascinating interview with the Olive Press he claims to have spied on these organised gangsters, as well as numerous terrorists to boot, including members of Al Qaeda and even the IRA.
Regularly supplying Madrid with a slew of information, everything had been fine until his handlers ‘threw him under the bus’ in 2004.
It came after Blanchard became the personal accountant for Mohamed Derbah – known as the ‘Godfather of Tenerife’ – in 1999.
A feared mafia boss, he owned and ran numerous timeshare firms and their security alongside his partner John ‘Goldfinger’ Palmer, who smelted the gold from the infamous Brink’s-Mat gold heist at Heathrow Airport in 1983 (recently turned into a BBC drama called The Gold).
Blanchard met them both (and many more) and, assuming his appeal is unsuccessful, he will tell all about his life at a showpiece trial in Madrid, likely next year.
Here, the Olive Press pours over the fascinating life of the ‘undercover agent’.
Mixing it up with Mo
Blanchard met Lebanese businessman Mohamed ‘Mo’ Derbah, in Tenerife, in 1999.
He wanted advice on how to invest (read launder) the proceeds of his timeshare business that, unknown to Blanchard, was a notorious scam that defrauded 17,000 holidaying Brits.
He should have thought twice and turned down the offer, but once he had agreed to help he got quickly drawn into a world of intrigue and criminality.
This included Mo ordering him to make a false deposition against a rival to take over his business – all with the connivance of the island’s police.
When he finally confronted him and threatened to go to the authorities, Mo replied: ‘You don’t have the balls’.
Fearful for his life, Blanchard claims he contacted Scotland Yard in July 2001, who set him up with a meeting with an agent from Spanish intelligence at the Novotel Hotel in Madrid.
Just five months later, Mo was arrested on charges including money laundering, arms dealing and potential ties to Middle Eastern terror groups.
Meanwhile, Blanchard’s Spanish handlers urge him to get out of the country.
And understandably so as Mo spent just 10 months in jail before getting bail for a trial that never happened, thanks to the slow wheels of Spanish justice.
Mo has remained a free man and become something of a pillar of the Tenerife business community, even recently dabbling in local politics
Yet there is a sting in the tail for Mo as Spain’s High Court has confirmed to the Olive Press he will finally face trial in Madrid over the coming months.
If Blanchard is successfully extradited to Spain, he will stand in a parallel trial to his one-time business associate – in spite of his claimed assistance in catching him.
My Spanish handlers
A pair of Spanish intelligence officers became Blanchard’s handlers – and his only lifeline to the law-abiding world he had left behind.
Inspector Fernando Muñoz, based in Madrid, was his primary contact, providing detailed instructions, guidance, and assurances of protection for him throughout.
Meanwhile, an officer called ‘Enrique Esteban’ guided him during spying on terror groups.
The relationship was healthy until Blanchard inadvertently told the Policia Nacional in Malaga he was working undercover.
This seriously angered Muñoz when the queries were run up the flagpole and he was forced to intervene.
“Don’t speak with other people about our issues – about Mohamed or terrorism,” the officer told Blanchard in a recorded phone call, the Olive Press has had access to.
Fearing the worst and he was about to be hung out and dried, he had a meeting with the pair in Madrid in May 2004.
He asked for assurance that the pair would acknowledge his role if the UK authorities got involved.
Muñoz allegedly delivered a chilling response: “No, no, no,” he allegedly told him. “That’s impossible, the relationship…..it’s not working.
“They [Spanish intelligence] would deny any involvement.”
The disavowal marked the start of his problems, which continue today.
Moscow mafia and the hit on Palmer
He was soon helping Lebanese billionaire Edmond Hamid, who had amassed a €25 billion fortune through dodgy dealings with the Kremlin.
He hired the accountant to help him hide his wealth, create a new identity and ride off into the sunset.
Blanchard got wind that part of Hamid’s fortune had been unwisely invested in a shadowy fund known as ‘Project Moscow’ allegedly via the help of a British fixer called Scott Young.
UK-based Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky was another investor in the lucrative venture, of which little is truly known – but is thought to have enjoyed the guiding hand of President Putin.
Hamid was tipped off by Russian security services to get out just in time, but Young was accused of ‘skimming off the top’ and ‘fell to his death’ out of a window.
Berezovsky, meanwhile, was found to have ‘committed suicide’ in his Berkshire mansion in 2013.
Both were killed by a trio of Bulgarian brothers known as ‘the Sofia Three’, Blanchard told the Olive Press, a trio who specialised in deadly and untraceable poisons.
He claims the hitmen were also responsible for the unsolved death of Palmer, who was gunned down outside his British home in 2015 on the orders of the Russian mafia.
A dalliance with the Irish Republican army
Blanchard claims he was recruited to delve into the overlapping worlds of organised crime and terrorist financing in Spain.
He was tasked with actively investigating a fraud suspected to involve Irish Republicans and telecommunications giant Lucent in 2003 (today Alcatel-Lucent).
Under the cover of a reputable corporate services company, Blanchard reported that two IRA operatives (one named ‘John’) had held middleman John Allin (a serial fraudster) captive and put a gun to his head as their scheme unravelled.
According to his investigations, money syphoned off from the company was used to bribe the very judges in Spain who were investigating the fraud.
My tip off about the London bombers
The most astonishing claim is that he came across the names of the July 7 bombers in London a year before they killed 52 people and injured 700.
He says he saw the names of 7/7 terrorists Mohammed Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer when Malaga police asked him to inspect the phone of Allin, who had allegedly been helping funnel money to the IRA.
He was then ordered to attend a meeting at the Meridian Hotel in London in 2003 with the future suicide bombers.
At the meeting, Blanchard played the helpful white-collar enabler as they discussed transferring €10 million to be withdrawn in cash from a bank in Spain.
He got an inkling of what they were up to when he noticed that Khan was nervous about his face being captured on CCTV.
Meanwhile, Allin was happy to lend his fraud and IRA-financing talents to the jihadis.
“Mohammed Khan masterminded the theft of £375,000 from the NatWest bank in Derby in the UK, and then transferred the money to Spain,” Blanchard told the Olive Press.
“It was all withdrawn in cash to fund terrorist activities.”
Both the names of Khan and Tanweer were included in a report to Muñoz on May 17, 2004, which was later faxed to MI5 – but never acted upon.
