Haroon Siddique Legal affairs correspondent From THE GUARDIAN, UK

Inquiry finds Fabian Picardo was ‘grossly improper’ to protect James Levy from a search warrant

The chief minister of Gibraltar made a series of “grossly improper” and “sinister” interventions to interfere in a live criminal investigation in order to protect his friend, mentor and business partner from the consequences of a search warrant, a public inquiry has found.

The retired England and Wales high court judge and inquiry chair, Sir Peter Openshaw, concluded that Fabian Picardo acted to protect James Levy KC when police were at Hassans law firm, where Levy was a senior partner, with a search warrant.

The warrant relating to Levy concerned an investigation into an alleged plot to steal a state security contract. He was never charged and Openshaw said that he had in effect been exonerated.

Openshaw said that while the Royal Gibraltar police (RGP) officers were at Hassans, Picardo summoned the commissioner of police, Ian McGrail, to his office and “berated” him while in a “towering rage” in “a grossly improper attempt to interfere in a legitimate police investigation and operation”.

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