Walter Finch
ANOTHER storm is brewing around the Royal Gibraltar Police and the current occupant of the department’s hotseat.
Reports from GBC indicate that Britain’s National Crime Agency is investigating allegations against outgoing Commissioner of Police Richard Ullger.
The move has raised eyebrows on the Rock as the NCA, sometimes likened to Britain’s version of the America’s FBI, usually concerns itself with serious organised crime.
The unusual investigation relates to claims made by a serving RGP officer and a former one in a recent court case – in which they are the defendants.
Inspector Sean Picton, 35, and Anthony Bolaños, 36, said that ‘Ullger shared sensitive information with the wife of a defendant in a separate case’.
Picton is facing charges of misconduct in public office and unauthorised access to computer material, while Bolaños is charged with aiding and abetting it.
The Commissioner of Police, who is set to retire in May, has said that he is ‘confident he has acted correctly at all times’, while the Gibraltar Police Authority has not suspended him while the investigation is carried out.
But observers have been left puzzled by why the allegations were made public in an unrelated trial.
One commentator has asked why the NCA was brought in to investigate a senior officer and not the Independent Office for Police Conduct.
“Would that not have been the appropriate UK body to have been seconded to deal with any police conduct issue in Gibraltar?” asked Robert Vasquez, a political commentator who writes under the nom de guerre Llanito World.
“What possible ‘serious and organised crime’ could be suspected within the RGP to have resulted in NCA involvement?”
Meanwhile, a legal source told the Olive Press: “It looks like the [The NCA] is investigating the allegations against Ullger, not Ullger himself.
“So the investigation will be looking at who’s making the allegations, and why. There’s something much bigger going on here.”
