Gibraltar’s government is bracing itself for an explosive public inquiry into the controversial early retirement of its police commissioner, who is alleged to have been put under “inappropriate pressure” with respect to a sensitive investigation involving a security contract.
A retired judge and a leading human rights lawyer from the UK are being flown in for the inquiry, which will resume with a preliminary hearing this month and hear allegations of corruption in the British overseas territory.
Ian McGrail stood down as commissioner in June 2020. At the last preliminary hearing, in July, Caoilfhionn Gallagher QC, a barrister at the England and Wales bar, who is representing McGrail, said: “His core allegations, are that (A) he was put under inappropriate pressure [at the highest levels of government] in respect of the conduct of a criminal investigation; and (B) he was subsequently put under pressure by the same individuals to request early retirement against his will.”
In heavily redacted written submissions, Gallagher said that allegations of corruption were “a substantial part of the subject matter of the inquiry”.
The inquiry comes at a difficult time for Gibraltar, which in June was added to the global money-laundering watchdog’s list of “jurisdictions with increased monitoring” and “strategic deficiencies”.
Gallagher acted for the family of the journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia at the public inquiry into her assassination, which found last year that the state of Malta – itself with corruption issues – was culpable.
The renowned human rights barrister Adam Wagner, Gallagher’s Doughty Street chambers colleague, is also on McGrail’s legal team. The inquiry is being chaired by Sir Peter Openshaw, a retired judge of the high court of England and Wales.
Sir Peter Caruana QC, the former Gibraltar chief minister and acting for the incumbent as well as the deputy governor and attorney general, said they all denied placing any pressure on McGrail and asserted that he “chose to retire because he knew that, having lost the confidence of the governor and the chief minister, his position would become untenable”.
The “factual background” section in the submissions for McGrail is entirely redacted. However, discussing the redactions, Caruana referred to a decision not to prosecute, adding: “If the subject matter of that paragraph entered the public domain at this stage, Her Majesty’s attorney would be put in very severe difficulty.”
The attorney general issued a decision not to prosecute in January with respect to three men, including one of the territory’s most senior civil servants, who were charged with conspiracy to defraud Bland Ltd, a 200-year-old company with deep links to Gibraltar society and politics.
The government paid more than £55m to Bland for services between 2011 and 2021. The men were accused of undermining Bland’s ability to perform its national central intelligence system contract with the government, including the ANPR (automatic number plate recognition) logging of number plates of vehicles crossing the border.
When the case was dropped on unspecified “public interest” grounds Gibraltar’s opposition party, the GSD (Gibraltar Social Democrats) said: “It is an open secret that this case may give rise to evidence linked to wider politically uncomfortable matters that remain pending or on which the shield of public interest has also been invoked such as the early departure of commissioner McGrail.”
It also said it had the effect “of burying material that is politically uncomfortable or damaging” to the country’s chief minister, Fabian Picardo.
Explaining his request for the redactions, Caruana said he wanted to protect the government and his clients from “the public opprobrium that attaches, despite the offices that they hold, to public opinion being exposed prematurely to one side’s accusatorial allegations”.
A Gibraltar government spokesperson expressed confidence that the inquiry, expected to begin in earnest next year, will establish that McGrail’s retirement was in the public interest.
“There is no truth in false allegations made by the GSD in relation to the Bland case and the action taken by the attorney general in that matter,” they said.
“There is absolutely no link, in fact or law, between the action taken by the attorney general in the Bland case and the commission of inquiry into the retirement of the former police commissioner.”
