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[RAFAELLA]

Fugitive Gary Robb back in the UK

By Simon Bahceli

AFTER NEARLY 13 years of freedom and luxury living in northern Cyprus, British fugitive Gary Robb was finally handed over to UK police yesterday.

Turkish Cypriot police raided Robb’s Kyrenia house on Monday and arrested him for illegal possession of a firearm. Yesterday they announced they had handed 47-year-old Robb and his 72-year-old mother Mavis over to British police in response to a request from the UK.

According to The Sun, Robb was flown back to Britain on Tuesday where he was met by police from Cleveland at Stansted Airport who took him back to the north east of England.

The pair are due to appear before Teesside Crown Court this morning.

His mother was also handed over because it is believed she helped Robb escape from the UK while on bail and allegedly brought proceeds of his drug business to the breakaway state.

Robb escaped to Cyprus after he was arrested for possession and intent to supply £10,000 worth of amphetamines, ecstasy and cannabis to a string of nightclubs in the north of England. He escaped while on bail. His brother, who was arrested for his involvement in the same crime, was sentenced to 10 years behind bars.

In 2001 he applied for a replacement passport and was inexplicably issued with one, enabling him to remain at large.

Several years after settling in the north, Robb acquired infamy when he appeared in the BBC documentary ‘Kenyon Confronts’ about the north’s growing status as a haven for British criminals escaping justice in the UK, made possible by the absence of an extradition agreement.

In the programme Robb tells British audiences, “The lads here are serious charges, I mean mega-serious, multiple murders, big drugs. If they deported all the drug dealers from here there’d be no one left on the island”.

By then Robb had managed to acquire citizenship of the breakaway ‘Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus’ (‘TRNC’), thereby making his extradition yet harder, as the ‘TRNC’ does not extradite its citizens to any country.

Robb then appeared to choose the relatively legal pursuit of selling real estate in the north and set up AGA Developments, a company that invested in occupied Greek Cypriot properties bought on the cheap and then developed for sale to Brits looking for holiday homes in the sun.

His company grew rapidly and soon AGA announced the start of what he called the Amaranta project. This involved 500 properties built into a valley close to the village of Klepini in Kyrenia district.

But soon things turned sour as his company failed to meet building deadlines, was accused of defrauding the tax offices and of defrauding clients. Rob was also stripped of his ‘TRNC’ citizenship when officials discovered he had lied about completing national service in Britain – something that had exempted him from having to do military service there.

To make matters worse for Robb, Interpol announced in May 2005 it had issued an arrest warrant for him and a number of his business associates because of their dealings in illegally expropriated Greek Cypriot properties.

In 2006 Robb tried to shake off his dodgy investments in Cyprus and head for new, and perhaps more fertile, pastures in Thailand. Thailand had suffered greatly from the tsunami and construction was in great demand. Unfortunately for him, however, his Turkish Cypriot business associates got wind of his plan to transfer the remainder of his company’s funds, plus the investments of hundreds of British clients, to his personal account in Thailand.

They persuaded the north’s authorities to freeze his assets in Cyprus. At the same time Robb tried to transfer £1.5 million UK from the UK to Thailand, leading the British to freeze those assets and begin the process of having him extradited from back to Britain. Fearing a future in a British jail, Robb decided to return to northern Cyprus.

Once back on the island and stripped of his passport by the Turkish Cypriot authorities, Robb struggled to restart work on his Amaranta project under the watchful eye of the north’s police and ‘central bank’. But his efforts appeared to have failed him, as did his health when he suffered a minor heart attack.

In January 2008, however, he managed to cut a deal with the Turkish Cypriot authorities and 200 British property buyers that would allow him access to funds allowing him to complete the project within 12 months. The deal was signed in January 2008, but according to a property website out of the north, 246 of the properties are still only partially built. It seems likely the Turkish Cypriot authorities simply ran out of patience.

According to website run by those involved in the north’s property market, 246 of the properties bought by unsuspecting Brits in the Amaranta project are still not completed. What will happen now that Robb is on his way to a UK jail cell remains to be seen.

Copyright © Cyprus Mail 2009

[RichardB]

This is excellent news

But spare a thought for those poor people who have lost their savings investing in stolen property in an illegal 'country'.......No don't bother