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The Olive Press Podcast episode 1 - Jody, Iberian Funerals, the mayor of Estepona, and more
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May 20, 2025
Welcome to the inaugural Olive Press Podcast, where we discuss the news and stories in Spain for expats from our set up in Marbella. Caroline Lips sits with Olive Press owner and publisher Jon Clarke and Digital Editor Walter Finch. On today's menu, we talk over our investigation into the Continental Wealth Management scandal in which hundreds of retirees lost their pensions. Sticking to the theme, we then discuss the latest expat scandal involving Iberian Funerals before moving on to the mayor of Estepona and the hot water he has got himself into. It's a wide-ranging survey of the news landscape in Spain in English, we hope you enjoy.
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0:00
they get away with taking money from poor people who just arrived people think it's white collar crime you know
0:05
it's not that bad but it's people's lives if that's the excuse he gives the truth must be really bad do you know what I mean
0:11
[Music] the rest is Spain
0:17
welcome to the Olive Press The Rest is Spain podcast in association with Stacial X i'm Caroline Lips and I'm here
0:25
with John Clark editor of the Olive Fresh and Walter Finch digital editor welcome guys thank you for having us
0:32
great thank you so let's get to the real stories behind the news john going to have to ask you about this front page
0:39
news about Jody so tell me well it's been an incredibly busy month for us
0:45
been an enormous amount of investive journalism going on and uh you know
0:50
maybe uh people won't know that we set up here nearly 20 years ago to investigate everything really from crime
0:57
to corruption to positive stories um sex offenders anything you can think of that
1:03
happen in Spain that has a link to expats and in particular this week we've we've had after about 10 years
1:10
investigation one of the uh people we've been pursuing for a long time is a woman called Jodie Smarts in fact she's got
1:17
four different names as Walt will tell you and uh we've finally uh after about 10 years of of covering what's probably
1:24
one of the biggest investment frauds in Spanish history 35 million she's finally
1:30
been sent to prison um yeah so it's uh we're very happy because we've been out
1:35
there for a long time probing her and um well Walt uh Walt investigated her
1:42
recently and um managed to track down her previous partner didn't you Walt who started yeah tell us about your role in
1:48
this so I'm basically chief investigative guy in the other press at
1:54
the minute and this one it came to us what a month or six weeks ago we got a
2:00
tip off that she had been convicted of fraud and this came out of the blue we didn't even know she was on trial and we
2:05
we kind of figured the CWM the Continental Wealth Management scandals one of those sad ones that had a sad
2:10
ending you know people didn't get their money back and you know terrible terrible twist or terrible end to the tale and then we found out that she'd
2:18
been done for three and a half years um and we're like "Wow that's crazy." And we we we wrote up the story we got in
2:26
touch with Jod as he's supposed to do as a journalist she's obviously not our biggest fan she replied back through her
2:33
lawyer she said um there's Yeah it's still uncertain if
2:38
if the client will go to jail because they're going to appeal but I mean I think they've got no chance to appeal
2:44
because she is the uh the sole director listed on the uh the company that committed the fraud so even if you try
2:50
and claim that your employees did the fraud you're still ultimately responsible and um through through that
2:57
particular investigation we got in touch with the other main figure in the fraud
3:03
which is um her ex partner Darren Kirby and many people they they they basically
3:11
said he was the mastermind and she was the um
3:16
fluy blond bimbo cutout that they put he put in place to kind of take the wrap paty the py she she claimed that i mean
3:23
she said that her name was put in there she knew nothing about it and it's so unfair that she's kind of carrying the can for all this problem and that you
3:30
know personally she wasn't involved that she didn't know anything about it and of course Darren confirmed it to us there
3:35
could be some truth cuz she obviously wasn't trained in finance and financial advising but the judge in the court
3:42
trial just in April he did say "You obviously turned a blind eye and you were profiting handsomely from these
3:47
activities." It's not like she was innocent but it probably is a lot of truth in that she didn't understand all the offshore investments and the um the
3:55
shady deals that these these pensions went through um companies in Molton and in Jibralta and we do think there's a
4:01
bigger bigger picture behind this fraud of um these huge investment companies
4:06
with hundreds of billions we do think these guys have a role to play in a story that hasn't been Oh really but we
4:14
should probably start from the beginning actually Darren who set the company up met Jod when she was cleaning the pool
4:19
in the house of his brother Patrick in Javier on the Costalanca and he took a bit of a shine to her and uh she was a
4:26
fash part-time fashion designer i think she'd done all sorts of different jobs uh and claimed to be a friend of Denise
4:31
Vanutton in the UK and we we do know that she had a fashion label called Jodie Bell London because she's posted
4:39
2,600 Instagram posts from all around the world including twice at New York Fashion Week showing off her incredible
4:45
creations most of it probably came from these poor victims who were encouraged
4:50
to invest in this sort of very highinterest offshore investment fund
4:56
and um probably had no idea where their money was really going yeah mo most of them did say they they so the victims
5:02
have claimed that they they expressed a preference for medium to low risk for
5:07
their patients which their life savings of course yeah yeah and then these guys were putting them into these high
5:14
high-risk structured notes and I've asked what is a structured note and it's very hard to explain i couldn't actually do it myself but it's these investments
5:20
that um I mean it's almost like a classic fraud like a classic pump and dump scheme you invest it in something
5:26
high and then it just drops out penny shares isn't it it's a pyramid scheme let's be honest it's like a pon like a
5:31
Ponzi scheme yeah i've heard the word Ponzi scheme i mean the What was Jod's role in all that she asking people to
5:38
give them money or I think she was like the pretty face of the company she did a lot of charity work which is one of
5:43
those things where she used her good reputation as a charity um philanthropist to bring in new clients
5:51
and I think her but her main function was to have her name on the on the uh
5:57
the one of the the deeds the deeds of the company so so I mean we had this confirmed i mean I should ask Walt
6:02
should probably explain how we tracked down Darren who's never spoken by the way for 7 years he fled by the way we
6:08
knew he'd fled to Austral there's only one photograph this guy he fled to uh Australia we now found out he fled to
6:15
Cambodia and then back to London we had some tip off a year ago that he was working in pubs and bars just outside
6:21
London in Slow and Maiden Head but we didn't really know any more than that we couldn't track him down we couldn't find
6:27
him and you know apart from sending someone over to go and dig around in Maiden Head for a few days we wouldn't attract them down so it kind of the
6:33
trail went cold um anyway then we got a tip off that you could call this number
6:39
that someone called up and said "This is his phone number he's still in the slow area." So so Walt uh uh and I sat in the
6:47
office and it was quite interesting wasn't it it was intriguing call him Dagger stuff it was we we called him and
6:54
um it rings it rings it rings and dead i think we called twice and nothing and we
7:00
called from um the the office phone and then from my personal WhatsApp I just texted him "Hey we're journalists we
7:06
just want to talk with you about Jodie you know she's the one who's been convicted we're not coming for you or
7:11
anything." And then and then nothing but then then suddenly we were just sort of packing up and saying "Oh this is obviously not going to work well let's
7:17
try another way." Suddenly the phone rings but from a um no no ID number no ID number and I said to that must be him
7:24
and he's like "You think?" Yeah it must be and so sure enough sure enough it was him well here's the weird thing right it
7:30
was like a kind of spooking spoof call wasn't it it was silent for a minute and you were just saying you were going like
7:35
"Uh hi Darren darren is that you we just want to speak to you Darren." And and it was all silent wasn't it and you could
7:40
hear the kind of something moving in the background and what did he suddenly at that point suddenly said hello no what
7:46
happened no then he hung up then I was texting him then he replied to the WhatsApps and then we were like "Okay
7:52
this is progress." But what we didn't expect is suddenly he called after being very very very cautious and hesitant he
7:58
called us he basically said he said I'm he said you can't take the call he said it's all off the record he said you know
8:05
I've not spoken to anyone before it's not true that it was a fraud i took I left Spain with €50 he said my exartner
8:13
my ex-wife Jod got all the money i had nothing i lost my house my car and poor little me you know had nothing even
8:20
though I set up this company and by his own admittance he said "Oh so but you 35 million went missing to these poor
8:25
people." And he was like "Well actually it's more like£25 million." 25 yeah he was a very unsure about these numbers of
8:31
people who've been ripped off for their life savings he was like "I don't know." So 25 million would be how much would that be about 35 million at the time in
8:38
US he's like "Yeah I guess it be about that." So yeah he said "So one thing you've got right is the number the
8:43
figure that they they ripped people off from but is that everything else is wrong and I want to tell my story and
8:49
set the record straight." And that that was the start of a very interesting journalistic you know exploration a
8:55
process over the last sort of week to kind of pin him down a bit and and actually get him to open up but I mean
9:00
we should point out here that some of these victims lost their entire life savings some of them lost their houses
9:06
some of them committed suicide and that is a fact that people died because of what these people did these scumbags who
9:12
who sit in offices who com people here and it's happened time and time again in the 20 years I've lived here longer than
9:18
20 years they get away with taking money from poor people who just arrived who don't understand you know what these
9:25
investments are and you know it's a very serious point here that while these people were losing their homes and their
9:31
livelihoods Jod and these guys were living high in the hog living the most amazing lives jod was in we we found her
9:38
in four or five foreign countries didn't we we found her in Venice we found her in um Thailand with the elephants with
9:44
the elephant yeah this is all money that I mean she might have made a business out of it but
9:50
it's all the seed money was stolen from expert retirement funds and we've actually got the bag state to prove it
9:56
yeah it's really it's really it's a really sad story but what's really happened what's great news is that when
10:02
we should say three years ago there was a trial in Denia and six or was it five of the members of this team executives
10:08
were taken to trial and the judge just didn't understand offshore pensions and as you were talking about contract and
10:15
so they threw the case out and all these guys that we'd pinned down and we'd spoken to all seemed to have got away
10:20
with it and was there there was one guy who was um sending his wife out to to steal the copies of the Olive Press when
10:26
they were delivered cuz we were had him on the front page we actually actually that's funny enough it was it was the it
10:32
was International Women's Day so we actually didn't have that very week on the cover we had an a women's day story
10:37
but he was on page five and the headline was in denial because all these five guys had all gone into court and
10:43
completely denied that had any involvement in the case but this guy uh his name's Neil Hathaway and he got his
10:49
wife was so upset to have found the newspaper in the port in Javier she actually told her husband and later that
10:54
day they went round and went around every single one of our 50 drops in Javier and picked them up in a car in
11:00
his black car with a friend and lifted all our newspapers into the back of his car would you believe it one of our
11:06
readers spotted it took a picture of this guy taking the papers putting them in the back of the car with that we went
11:13
to the police and the police just went to the courts so we actually filed a denunia against this guy and the two
11:19
guys who did it sure enough the courts agreed and they started a a court case against him for stealing our newspapers
11:25
so we were we then went and fronted this guy up at his house and he basically was crying i mean he was saying "Oh my poor
11:31
wife was so upset." But that's great that you're there to tell those stories and that journalism that hard-hitting
11:38
journalism but maybe we should go on to the other story that's really big about the funeral plans yeah this is kind of a
11:44
follow on they're not directly connected but it's another scandal in which expats
11:50
in Spain have been the victims and the same kind of age demographic as well the first one was pensions the second one is
11:55
funeral what was it fuel insurance funeral plans funeral plans and so it's
12:01
the same the same targets and then it's current it's current so it's unraveling now isn't it and this is a current yeah
12:07
we actually press we broke this a month two months ago probably it came out in March so yeah two months ago and we've
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been following it now for about three maybe four issues okay uh and I mean but we I mean I'm not I'm I'm not ashamed to
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say this but we used to work with this company as did all our rival newspapers and TV stations radio station which company was it it's called it's called
12:27
was originally SPN funeral plans and then it changed its name to Berian funeral plans and you know as you know a
12:34
lot of legitimate companies here like golden leaves Avalon who who have these plans that if you you know you pass away
12:41
your children back in the UK or loved ones that your funeral's taken care of and you know you you actually uh
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everything's dealt with from start to finish and you pay a premium sometimes you pay monthly sometimes you pay in one lump I mean it can be we discovered was
12:54
it the oak plan was $7,9 900 and they're still advertising it by the way in their website as we speak today you can still
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get it even though the company's gone bust yeah what's the status with this then has it been brought to court or
13:09
I mean look the the truth is is that we don't really know because nobody at the
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company will speak to us nobody has gone on the website to say that it's shut down but we have had readers calling us
13:22
saying our funeral was cancelled it wasn't paid for there's hundreds of people we get emails every day sad
13:28
emails i'd like to know more about the Iberian funerals what's going on we have a funeral plan with them oh that's
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really sad and there's so many sad and we haven't really got much we can say we can say go to the Citizens Advice Bureau
13:39
they're doing a class action but in these cases when there's a pot of money that goes missing it doesn't normally
13:44
come back you know that's terrible well what what we know is that that Steven Nelson who was the owner who used to
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have his office in Allerin he's he went to Portugal about six or seven years ago
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and I remember him quite well from his office funny little guy and he bald-head guy and he spoke he had a Manunian
14:02
accent but he was he was he just there was something about him didn't seem like a bad guy but he had to go to Portugal
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and the sense was that he was going there because there were problems in Spain and okay so yeah he he ended up um
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he ended up set continuing the company there with his partner woman called Karen now Karen was on all the deeds a
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bit like Jod was on the deeds from the company now she left inexplicably last
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year she stopped being the um the sole owner of the company and passed it back
14:30
to him okay which is a bit suspicious so we obviously got had her name found her name eventually and we sent a journalist
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out to try and track her down went up to Alerin and we eventually tracked down her son who was also working for the
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company he said "I don't know anything about it i lost money i haven't worked for them for years." But again we've got
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proof that he worked for them as little as a year ago because we've seen emails between him and clients as for his
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mother she's not going to say anything so then we track down others nobody would say anything meanwhile Steven's
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dead the bank accounts are frozen nobody's getting their funerals paid and
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we actually are none the wiser as to if anyone any of this money even still exists so sure but experience tells you
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that um you don't get happy endings the best you can get is some kind of jail
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sentence or even just a a court trial for whoever did it and in people Yeah people think it's white collar crime you
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know it's not that bad but it's people's lives was some people have actually committed suicide yeah that's the point Caroline
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it's it it's like people come here and maybe they they're they're not necessarily the brightest people and you
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know they're gullible and they want to believe that people are doing it for the right reasons and so it seems like a logical thing having a funeral plan and
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there's no doubt that most of them work but on some occasions they don't exactly but you know let's be optimistic here
15:51
let's say look Steven Nelson when he died this was recently funerals were
15:56
being paid for well we know that fuel has been paid for in February we know that funeral has been paid for at the beginning of March so it's a possibility
16:02
the bank the two the various bank accounts they had have just been frozen there's money in the bank his house is
16:08
worth over a million it's actually on the market for a million he had a boat it's possible that by the time they work
16:13
things out you know and it goes through goes through the courts there may be some money to pay for these funerals and everyone will either get their money
16:19
back or will at least get their funerals now we're going to take a quick break from talking about the news to hear from
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so what other stories are you investigating where you cannot say at this point yeah we do have to think about what we can and can't say before
16:57
we go blabor but the other one the big one that we just published in the um this week's edition of the Ola Press is
17:03
about the mayor of Estapona and most people I'm sure will know Estapona is one of the most fastest growing most
17:09
important provinces in in certainly in Malaga and it's probably the fastest growing in Spain i think I have seen
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that if you ever drive through it there's the new developments going out new apartments is just exploding and it
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has this mayor called um Jose Garcia Obano he's been in power since 2011 and
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he's basically overseeing this transformation people have become very w rich from the property they own so many
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foreigners are coming in to purchase property and it's just turbocharged and he's been the guy
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credited with this he won in 2019 he was the mayor who won election with the highest percentage of the votes in all
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of Spain holy Spirit he's incredibly popular among a certain segment but it
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does seem that he also um has been taken advantage of his time or his power in
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Estopon and this can we have to be a bit careful how we phrase it i think I think we can say that the smell of sleas has
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emanated from Estapona for probably well over a decade now and you know and the same thing's happened in Marbay let's
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not forget that five out of the last six mayors in Marba went to prison so you know for corruption and actually that is
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also the same with Estapona this guy if he goes to jail he will literally be the sixth in a row of Esonz I think maybe
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with one exception it's the same deal i mean I mean look the the questions
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that have been raised we've raised and we have raised it many times over the years and and let's just make this clear
18:35
Caroline that our jobs are not to kind of cozy up like some of our rivals and get lots of money from the town hall so
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we just write positive news no our jobs are to investigate these people and find out what's really happening in towns so
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we have looked into the mayor on a number of occasions and we've reported about how certain family members have
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had juicy contracts to build huge you know ring roads and you know different
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centers towers and athletics tracks every everything every public contract
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in in Estapon goes to the mayor's son or son-in-law i think I think a lot of them go to his family i mean we should be a
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little bit non-specific exactly but we should also question where all the flowers come from the flower pots because there's a connect people claim
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it comes from friends and family of the mayor but what's bringing him down this time is not so he's been the teflon dawn
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in all on all of these um quite well doumented escapades and the Spanish press they're very good they publish all
19:28
this they're not afraid but not local mostly in Madrid you're talking about the the TV station well what he's
19:35
alleged to have done now and I don't think he's going to get off to be honest he he was first last year accused of
19:42
sexual harassment and coercion by a local policeman very strange bizarre
19:48
case and the allegation was that the mayor forced the policeman and his wife
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into a kind of a weird manata right and there was talk of um trips to Germany
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and um all paid for expenses luxury apartments in Estapon and favors and money and okay and this guy was using
20:06
the mayor was using a combination of um fear and favors to keep them in line and allegedly allegedly thank you well I
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think we should say it isn't necessarily allegedly Caroline the reason we can say that is because it went to court and the
20:21
judge didn't throw it out the judge has what's called archived it which means he sheld the case but he said and the exact
20:28
words were this was um what's the word w that the couple went into this
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relationship consensually consensually okay so they're not saying it didn't happen they're saying that the couple
20:40
consented to being involved and we should also point out that that the mayor of Estapona owns a a castle hotel
20:47
in in Ma where they had wives swapping events and it was a sort of sex infamous around town isn't it castle well I mean
20:54
we people complained to us many years ago about a roundabout where they'd put a statue up a gold statue which I think
21:01
had cost €230,000 i could be wrong there but the gold statue in in question is a couple
21:07
having sex only you know we're not prudes at the olive press and you know it's artistically has its merits but on
21:14
a roundabout in the main sort of you know ka estapon I think it was the children are playing and you're right by
21:19
the beach it was controversial and we raised it and we put it on our front page and strangely the the statues now
21:26
moved um so I think there's been this sort of sense of something a bit fishy
21:31
about him for a while but no one could pin him down until now until now this is
21:36
right so the um this the policeman and his wife they made the the allegations against the mayor the judge like John
21:43
said didn't really buy it he said it was consensual but then he said "Wait a minute." One of the allegations was that
21:49
the judge gave the wife a cushy job in the town hall which he never did checking plant pots and lamposts
21:56
crucially she never actually did it you couldn't make it up but yeah we put a
22:01
headline as lampost lady okay and um but clearly this is misappropriation of public money it's only about 5,000 five
22:09
and a half thousand euros but it's it's clearly it's like how they got Al Capone on on tax evasion it's clearly the tip
22:15
of the iceberg that they can actually pin on him okay i mean the point is I mean that even if that was a proper job
22:21
looking after flower pots and lamp posts she admitted she didn't actually do it she didn't even turn up at the town hall
22:27
so so and fortunately for us Teley Sinko did a very good job in Madrid and they got the pay slips that she got over I
22:32
think it's eight different pay slips so as you say it's only 5,000 it was 5,000 a month I think we don't know exactly
22:38
how many thousands it was it was 2,000 a month for the for the luxury apartment on the beach to pay the rent and then
22:43
the job was about 300,000 a month um but she only did it from 6 weeks okay so
22:50
basically it was it was favors yeah and and the stuff that happened I mean we've read the whole
22:56
depositions and the stuff that happened you know behind closed doors in hotel rooms you you just don't we can't talk
23:01
about it yeah some some of the itel in these legal documents is incredible graphid and and like and you read it in
23:08
like dry Spanish legal language but it's like you can't well antenna tres at night but in 9:00 at night I've heard
23:14
them talking about it and tella talking about it you know the noria the lovers and what they got up to but this is after 9:00 this is after the watershed
23:21
what what landed on the floor that they had to clean up you know goodness you what I want to know is how
23:27
do you find the stories like how do you do they come to you or do you always are You're always on the lookout this is a
23:33
combination what happens as John will know very well the longer you are in a place nor more people you know and the
23:38
more people who trust you they tell you stuff okay other other things a lot of it is stories that come to us a lot of
23:44
it is our own having an ear to the ground and you have a nose for these things cuz the whole eston may thing
23:50
it's it's huge so we have one little case well not little but one case with the mayor and through that it leads to
23:56
other things so often it's following the threads okay yeah and I think uh as Walt points out often you'll get a tip off
24:03
that doesn't quite work and you know it's there and then someone else will come in with another tip off and then
24:09
you'll be like okay then you might get a phone call so you build it up for a little while and it might take three
24:14
might take six months could even take a year but finally you feel you've got enough information that you can then go
24:20
out and write a story now I should point out often we write very carefully legal stories our our um we have a a legal
24:27
adviser in London he's a he's an investor in the company Adam Oliver who was the Granada lawyer for Granada TV
24:33
and also the independent night lawyer so we will put out a very carefully legal story about a public figure or a mayor
24:40
or anyone who will and we will then it's a sort of slight fishing exercise so we put the story out and we hope that we
24:47
will get off the back of that people coming back saying "Oh I was also a victim." And almost every time we've
24:53
done it we've then had five six seven people coming back interesting we also were very fortunate to have a very good
25:00
connection to the secret police here in Marbaya so so called Greco who are in
25:05
four different parts of Spain and who are main job is to keep an eye on organized crime serious organized crime
25:11
drug dealing terrorism um and we not only get tip offs from them but we can
25:17
also go to them off the record or officially on the record but then you know also we have to remember Caroline
25:23
that we try to do some positive stuff as well we try and do as much upbeat you know this Trevor McDonald idea the
25:29
ending the 10:00 news with some positive news we do try and do such as the uh the chef for children one is what something
25:35
we did recently right that was a great What was that what a great example it's a an organization that's been doing this
25:41
for seven years here now uniting Spain's top chefs i mean we're saying 44 this
25:47
time Michelin starred chefs or more came down to Ben Abvis and they actually
25:52
spend the entire day cooking with children who are underprivileged or have problems in this occasion they have
25:57
diabetes type one and so this year it's very important to to stress diets and
26:03
how you look after yourself and the health of the nation of course there's a very important point here that that four out of 10 kids in Spain are either obese
26:10
or overweight which is actually leading Europe it's really alarming how the Mediterranean diet is just sinking
26:16
anyway these chefs are here including two or I think could be three three Michelin star chefs who are happy to
26:22
talk happy to picture give a lot of their time to try and encourage uh kids to eat properly and so yeah we had great
26:30
access with these guys just last week which was fantastic that must be rewarding as well to do all that i love it i love doing it Caroline i mean it's
26:36
like you with your magazine you run the Marbaya top entrepreneurs yeah exactly i mean you you you get to meet some
26:43
inspirational people for that don't you you do yeah it's very exciting because there's so many different people coming to Marba all the time to set up
26:50
businesses you know from different nationalities and it's just it's just so diverse now so you do you meet some
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really interesting people yeah and it and you know all those sort of funny headlines that you read in the Daily Mail about you know Costell crime
27:01
actually for those of us who live here we're lucky enough to live here there's a lot of really great stuff going on isn't there some great pieces yeah i
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mean I know we have just been talking about two big Costadidel crime stories but actually there's a lot of honest
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people as well and those are the people that we need to kind of protect with the journalism that you're doing and things
27:19
that was so interesting and so many good stories but one that I think is so pertinent is the Valencia flood 6 months
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on and Mason how can he still be in power so John what do you think i mean
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it's absolutely remarkable but no one ever ever resigns here i mean they never stepped down this guy is surely
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responsible for in part for what happened okay they had they had a whole year's rain in 3 hours but nonetheless
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they were Valencia University and schools didn't send their kids to school that day imet weather agency in Madrid
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said it was going to be absolute red warning for floods and yet this guy Carlos Mazon who's the leader of the
28:00
Valencia region authority went planned a lunch with a local journalist TV
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journalist and went out for his lunch and vanished effectively for 5 hours uh
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meanwhile meanwhile 228 people died in these floods he did not appear at the
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emergency center till at least at the very even conservatively till about 7:00 in the evening did he or 6:30 7:00 in
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the evening what was he doing Walt there was Yes a 5-hour blackout and the the
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excuse that he's given is is almost if that's the excuse he gives the truth must be really bad do you know what I
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mean cuz he's saying "Oh I was with a journalist having lunch for 5 hours he's a married man." It's just like either
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what are you going to do in 5 hours you can't talk either he's going to be slightly szled do you know what I
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lunches are quite long that's true they can they can be so mess they call it
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when you carry on going and but I mean normally with lots of friends rather than just a single oneonone with a with
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a female colleague but also where's his phone why was he inaccessible he I think he claimed there was no signal in this
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restaurant very famous restaurant okay i I called the restaurant by the way i actually called him up and the guy was rather rather surprised he got hold of
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me and I managed to get through and in my best Spanish I sort of said look you know can you please tell me a bit a little bit where was he exactly what did
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he have for lunch who was he with and he's he's laughed and chuckled and he's like you know I really can't say you
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know it's not worth it it's not worth it he's a regular here it wouldn't be right but you had to give it had to give it a
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go but I think one really really key thing here is that Salomi Prais who was his head of emergencies at Valencia town
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Valencia regional authorities she was in charge of sending out alerts but She admitted last week she didn't even know
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there was a text message alert you could send out she had no idea wow i mean this is how organized uh they were over in
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Valencia so on that note I think we've covered a lot for today that was so interesting and good to see all these
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stories coming out um what are your thoughts John thank you i've really enjoyed it it's been great to have the
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opportunity to to talk to to you guys it's good to talk about the issues that affect expats of Spain because normally
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we write about them we don't talk that often
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