Gary Hagland - The ‘mysterious seventh
man’ in the McCann Team private investigations
Felicity Hathaway
Following
the Madeleine Foundation meetings I attended back in 2009/10, where the name of
Gary Hagland was brought up, I have done some investigations into him. I’m
sorry it’s taken me a while to come back to you.
I
am calling him the ‘mysterious seventh man’ because what I regard as the six
other main private investigators in the case have been clearly (if not exactly
prominently) publicised. They are:
Francisco Marco, boss of Metodo 3 (made bogus claims
that Madeleine would be ‘home by Christmas)
Antonio Jimenez Raso, chief McCann investigator for Metodo 3
(former police officer, imprisoned from February 2008 to July 2012 on suspicion
of involvement in a major criminal gang)
Julian Peribañez, assistant to Antonio Jimenez Raso
Kevin
Halligen (known to the McCanns as Richard Halligen) (continuously in prison
since October 2009 on suspicion of fraud, now convicted of fraud and serving
time in prison in the U.S.)
Dave
Edgar, Cheshire-based retired detective (said Jane Tanner might have seen a
woman not a man on 3 May 2007, was ‘convinced’ that Madeleine was being held in
a ‘prison lair’ close to Praia da Luz)
Arthur
Cowley, Flintshire-based retired detective (set up bogus company, ALPHAIG, to
make it look as though he and Edgar were running a well-established detective
agency called ‘Alpha Investigations Group’.
Gary Hagland, from Nottingham, was employed
directly by the effective controller of the McCann Team’s private
investigation, Brian Kennedy, from September 2007 to March 2008. It was a
crucial phase of the investigation, covering the period from the date of the
McCanns being declared ‘arguidos’ to the moment the McCanns succeeded in
winning an estimated £550,000 in agreed libel damages from various British
media.
So far as I can see, Hagland’s name has only
cropped up twice publicly in relation to the McCann case. He was identified as
a McCann Team investigator in articles by ‘Blackwatch’ on the old ‘Sargent’s
Inn’ blog. And he has contributed to an
internet forum.. It is time that his role in the McCann Team investigation was
highlighted.
He was born Gary Peter Hagland on 15 September 1954. He will therefore be 58 years
old on 15 September 2012.
I
have not yet managed to track down his secondary school and further education
details, but at various times he has claimed to have the following academic qualifications:
M.Sc. and M.B.A. (respectively: Master of Science and Masters degree in
Business Administration). It would be
very unusual for someone to have two Masters’ degrees - and he
doesn’t say which University he got them from.
Either
in 1978 or 1979, at the age of about 24/25, he got a job working in the
Criminal Intelligence Department of Royal Hong Kong Police. There is also
evidence that he may have worked for a time on the Organised Crime and Triad
Department of the force. He worked there
until 1985, when he returned home to England and made his home at Charleston
House, Nottingham, where he has been living ever since.
I’ve
been unable to discover what job he got on his return here from Hong Kong, but
I have been able to establish that by September 1991 he was working as
Associate Director of Compliance at Albert E Sharp and Co. ‘Compliance’
basically means compliance with various financial regulations designed to
prevent fraud.
Clearly
Hagland was becoming something of an expert in compliance with financial
regulations because the Editor of the Journal
of Financial Regulation and Compliance invited Hagland to write an article on the
subject. The article, ‘Effective
Compliance v. Regulatory Gestation’, was published in 1993, in Vol. 2, Issue 1,
pp. 11-21. Accompanying the article is a brief description of Gary Hagland,
which states:
“Gary
Hagland, AMSI, MIMgt, entered the fledgling area of compliance in 1985 after
leaving the Royal Hong Kong Police where he had served in criminal intelligence
for some six years.
I
have not been able to track down what AMSI stands for. MIMgt is: ‘Member of the
Institute of Management’.
On
3 May 1994, Gary Hagland became a Director of OMFS (AESFM) Ltd. On
2
January 1996 he became Director of OMFS (BSPEP) Ltd. I have not yet been able to find out exactly
what these companies do, but they were clearly connected with investment and
finance. Gary Hagland’s role in OMFS (BSPEP) Ltd was as ‘Compliance
Officer’. Fellow Directors of the
company included, at one time, Sir William Royden Stuttaford.
At
some time in the 1990s he also became a Director of Gerrard (OMH) Ltd, but resigned this
Directorship on 14 October 1998.
Just
11 days later, on 25 October 1998, he also resigned from the Boards of both OMFS
(BSPEP) Ltd and OMFS (AESFM) Ltd.
In
1999, Hagland was clearly regarded more than ever as an expert in the fields of
fraud and money laundering. An article by him was published that year in a
journal called: ‘Money Laundering Bulletin’.
At
some stage around then, he became a ‘consultant’ with special expertise on
money-laundering for law firm Wragge and Co in their Birmingham office, where
his job was: ‘advising clients on the active management of compliance risks, including money laundering’. He was also said to ‘work with the Institute of Directors' Board consultancy
department on the "Compliant Board" initiative that aims to guide
company directors through the labyrinth of regulations and procedure that
successful compliance demands’. An article about Hagland’s work for Wragge and
Co. appeared in the Financial Times
Director magazine, 30 March 2001, and is reproduced below (Appendix 1).
Clearly, then, he was an acknowledged expert in the
fields of financial regulation, compliance, fraud and money laundering.
On
4 April 2002, Hagland became a Director of Heath Reid & People Limited, as
their ‘Attorney’ - but resigned just 8 days later. Just for the record, his
fellow-Directors at that time were:
Toby
James Brook-Reid (also Company Secretary) (then aged 27)
Thomas
Heath (then aged 31)
Dominique
Fay Welch (then aged 26)
Philip
Anthony Jones (then aged 41).
In
September 2007 he was hired by Brian Kennedy. Kennedy had set up a base for his
private investigations into Madeleine’s disappearance at a house in Knutsford,
Cheshire, close to his home in Swettenham and to Wilmslow, the base for his
Latium Group business empire.
Hagland
resigned from the McCann Team in March 2008 - around the time the McCann Team
hired Kevin Halligen as their lead investigator at a cost of £500,000 plus
expenses.
In
August of the same year, Hagland he became a Director of Investec Gresham II Ltd,
resigning a few weeks later on 30 September. Investec Gresham II Ltd appears to
be an investment fund, one of dozens of subsidiary companies of the
international banking group, Investec (currently the subject of litigation in
South Africa). A search of Investec Group companies shows that many of their investment
funds appear to be placed for their clients in low tax havens such as the
Cayman Islands, Jersey and Switzerland.
Also,
on 15 August 2008, Hagland became a Director of Investec Trust Holdings Ltd
(ITH). At the time of his appointment, most of his fellow Directors of ITH were
living in tax havens, thus:
Richard
David Williams – Channel Islands
Robert
Clifford – Channel Islands
Brian
Williams – Channel Islands
James
Michael Spittal – Channel Islands
Keith
Hamilton Turberville – Channel Islands
Steven
John Heilbron – South African Banker
Xavier
Michel Louis Isaac – Switzerland.
It
appears that Hagland remains a Director of this company to this day.
On
6 March 2010, there was an all-night ‘rave’ party at Nottingham Trent
University (next door to Charleston House, where Hagland lives). One resident
was apparently hospitalised as a result of the event, and, as reported in the Nottingham Post on 15 March 2010 (see
below, Appendix 2), Hagland appeared to be taking the lead in protesting
against the University’s failure to address the nuisance caused by these
all-night parties.
Soon
afterwards, on 9 April 2010, he became a Director of Charleston House, which
appears to be owned and managed by its residents - but he resigned just 23 days
later (2 May 2010). Charleston House (Nottingham) Ltd, based at Ossington
Chambers, 6-8 Castle Gate, NEWARK, Nottinghamshire, NG24 1AX, Company No.
06611330, had been incorporated on 4 June 2008.
The founding Directors included Mr and Mrs David and Valerie Russell. David Russell is shown as having a total of 18
Directorships.
Gary Hagland and the Jensen
sisters
The old ‘Sargeants Inn’ website carried information
about Gary Hagland’s involvement in interviewing the ‘Jensen sisters’ (Jayne
Jenson and Annie Wiltshire). As far as I can tell, ‘Sargents Inn’ must have had
a confidential source for this information, for I have seen it nowhere else.
Here is some information culled substantially from
the ‘Sargents Inn’ site, no longer available on the internet.
Jayne
Jensen claims to have seen Robert Murat around the Ocean Club at around 10.30pm
on the evening of Thursday 3 May, the night Madeleine was reported missing. In
this respect, she supported the accounts of three members of the ‘Tapas 7’,
namely Rachael Oldfield, Fiona Payne, and Russell O’Brien. These three made
statements on 15 and 16 May 2007 to the police claiming they had seen Robert
Murat ‘hanging around the Ocean Club’ at around the same time as the Jensen
sisters (i.e. around 10.30pm to 11.00pm). They claimed to have recognised Murat
from footage being shown of him on TV the day he was arrested (15 May). The
Jensen sisters also claimed to have seen two blond men hanging around one of
the ground floor apartments before Madeleine was reported missing.
The
statements of the Jensen sisters and of the ‘Tapas 3’ (above) followed hard on
the heels of Jane Tanner having reportedly been adamant, two days earlier, that
Robert Murat was the person she claimed to have seen carrying a child from near
the McCanns’ apartment at about 9.15pm on Thursday 3 May.
About
five to six month later (that is, around November 2007), according to the
‘Sargents Inn’, the Jensens sisters were, in turn, interviewed by Gary Hagland
and Julian Peribañez) from Spanish detective agency Metodo 3,
and either before then, or after, by Detective Constable Bob Sidoli and Detective
Constable Jo Godfrey, both believed to be from Kent Police. A Robert Sidoli is shown as living in Ashford,
Kent. He may have a martial arts qualification. Peribañez was
seen walking side by side with Clarence Mitchell in Praia da Luz in a
Portuguese TV news bulletin, believed to be in November 2007.
It was on 13 November 2007 that Kennedy had two
meetings, one with the Portuguese Police at Portimao Police Station, the other
with his lawyer, Edward Smethurst and Robert Murat and his lawyer, Francisco
Pagarate. Five days later, the McCanns and the Tapas 7 all met with their
advisers at Rothley Court Manor. The day after that meeting, Panorama screened
its documentary on the case.
None
of these reports about the interviews of the Jensens come from the police, they
all appear to come from anonymous sources such as: ‘a source close to the
family’ or ‘a source close to the investigation’.
The
Jensen sisters had played tennis on holiday in Praia da Luz with the McCanns.
Rajinder Balu from Essex, and Neil Berry also drank with the Jensen sisters.
Neil
Berry gave statements to the police on 7 May 2007 and on 8 January 2008 (when buccal
swabs were taken). Berry’s 7 May statement is however not in the Portuguese Police files. Rajinder
Balu’s statement is also missing from the police files.
According
to the Sargents Inn, the Jensen sisters were questioned, altogether, for a
total of 11 hours. It is not known on what date they were questioned.
That
is all I have for you at the moment.
Appendix 1: Article 30 March 2001 in Financial Times Director featuring Gary Hagland:
EXTRACT FROM ‘FINANCIAL TIMES
DIRECTOR, 30 March 2001
Gary Hagland is a
consultant with law firm Wragge & Co advising clients on the active
management of compliance risks, including money laundering.
He works with the
Institute of Directors' board consultancy department on the "Compliant
Board" initiative that aims to guide company directors through the
labyrinth of regulations and procedure that successful compliance demands. Mr Hagland paints a broad picture of
the type of non-financial services businesses that may well be targets for the
money launderer. These include auction houses, expensive car
dealerships, property agents and developers - indeed any business that is used
to handling high-value assets.
According to Mr
Hagland, a problem for companies in complying with anti-money laundering
initiatives is that their prevailing culture and ethos does not lend itself
readily to accommodate scepticism about prospective customers. Rather, the
opposite is likely to be the case. "To tackle the possible threat of being
unwitting accomplices to a money laundering scheme, the challenge for
non-financial businesses is to change their mindset, their core attitudes. The
reputational focus of most businesses is clearly not on money laundering,"
says Mr Hagland.
Businesses used to
dealing with wealthy clients are also used to handling those clients' wishes
for anonymity and discretion; ideal conditions in which the money launderer can
ply his trade. But businesses are required, increasingly, to interrogate rather
than interview their clients and prospective clients.
In order to identify
the risks, businesses need to ensure that they have a firm grasp of what money
laundering is, how it may have an impact on their business, and the systems and
procedures they may require to put in place in order to minimise their risk of
exposure. But putting awareness into practice is more difficult. As Gary
Hagland explains, practical guidance is thin on the ground: "One of the
principal problems is that there is no established methodology for businesses
to follow. Though business is told that it must be self-policing, there are no
clear guidelines as to how they should go about fulfilling that role."
The risks associated
with money laundering are clear enough. Money laundering is a criminal offence:
any individual caught helping to process the proceeds of crime faces a lengthy
prison sentence. Companies which stand accused of assisting with money
laundering operations also risk substantial damage to their reputations.
But, how can you tell
a money launderer?
For many businesses
they are likely to be the kind of person that, on first impressions, they would
welcome as a customer.
Money launderers are
extremely well-funded, well-advised and make use of technically elaborate and
sophisticated schemes to cover their tracks.
Appendix 2: Article in the Nottingham Evening Post on 15 March 2010, featuring a photo of Gary
Hagland:
STRESSED NEIGHBOUR HOSPITALISED AFTER STUDENT ‘RAVE’
AN all-night rave at student halls left a pensioner in
hospital with stress caused by noise, residents claim.
Nottingham Trent University has been criticised for its
response to the party, which was announced on Facebook.
PICTURE: Gary Hagland outside Canterbury Court.
Residents say Canterbury Court, in Peel Street, close to
the university's city campus, has been an unofficial rave venue in recent
years.
Gary Hagland, who lives in Charleston House, which
neighbours Canterbury Court, said partygoers urinated and littered around the
complex.
He also claims a couple had sex in a camper van in full
view of residents at a similar party in 2008.
Mr Hagland, 55, a resident in Charleston House since
1985, said: "There have been a handful of parties like this in recent
years and they are usually at the end of term.
"The mess that is left and the disturbance of people
living here is something that is not being dealt with properly by the
university, which leases this accommodation to its students.
"The noise and vibration from the music was so bad
on this occasion that our neighbour had to go to hospital because her heartbeat
got to about 200 from stress.
"Some of the students we have lived with have been
hard-working and have been good neighbours.
"This party, though, is the worst one we have ever
known."
It is understood hundreds attended the party, on
Saturday, March 6, including uninvited guests and non-students.
Mr Hagland has contacted police, the council and senior
staff at the university about the issue.
A spokeswoman for the university said: "The
university is investigating and is in contact with both the residents of this
property and those in the immediate area to determine the exact nature of the
complaint.
"The university takes any complaints relating to its
students very seriously and does not condone any anti-social behaviour.
"Any confirmed misconduct attributed to its students
will be dealt with under the university's Student Code of Behaviour."
Notts Police said they did not receive an emergency call
on the night.
A city centre beat manager is involved in the investigation.
Inspector Andy Townsend said: "Loud music and noise,
which continues into the early hours, can be distressing and I hope, following
these discussions, the situation does not arise again."
michael.greenwell@nottinghameveningpost.co.uk
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