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CRIME

Brit expat, 76, arrested for killing girlfriend

A British pensioner has been arrested on suspicion of murdering his companion after her decomposed body was discovered in southern Spain.

Published: 10 March 2015 15:24 CET
Brit expat, 76, arrested for killing girlfriend
The decomposed body of Rosie Webster was discovered on Tuesday. Photo from missing appeal released by family

Rosemary Broadwell, 76, went missing on September 15th in Algorfa, an area on the Costa Blanca near Alicante that is popular with expatriates.

Her companion Charlie Bevill-Warcup reported her missing at the time and an appeal was launched by her family. Her granddaughter Lisa had appealed for information on Twitter.

 

 

"We have only just found out the horrible news," Cheryl Webster, the daughter of the victim, told The Local.

Confirming that Mr Bevill-Warcup was being held for the murder she said: “He lived with her, but he is not my father and was not married to her,” she said. "It’s come as a horrible shock, we are waiting to find out more."

Detectives from the paramilitary Civil Guard at Algorfa arrested Bevill-Warcup last night after he reportedly confessed to killing his partner.

Reports in Spanish newspaper El Mundo said that under questioning on Monday he had told the officers investigating Rosemary's disappearance, that he had beaten her with a blunt instrument.

On Tuesday he took officers to an area of scrubland where her decomposed body was discovered.

A postmortem confirmed that she had been beaten to death.

Bevill-Warcup had reported his partner missing, telling police that she had disappeared after he dropped her off at an ATM at the Ciudad Quesada urbanization near her home.

A missing notice drawn up by her daughter Cheryl described Rosemary – known to her friends as Rosie – as "4 ft 8 inches tall and a fit, well and able-bodied lady".

"Rosie is slim and has short blonde hair with red/purple high-lights. She has a tattoo of a tiny coloured lizard on her foot and another of a dolphin on her right shoulder," the missing notice read.

"Another distinguishing feature is that Rosie always has perfectly manicured finger nails."

CRIME

Spanish court shelves Shakira tax fraud case

A court in Spain said Thursday it has shelved a probe into another alleged tax fraud by Colombian pop star Shakira, putting an end to her legal woes in the country where she once lived.

Published: 9 May 2024 13:47 CEST
Spanish court shelves Shakira tax fraud case

Prosecutors had opened the case in July, accusing her of using a network of companies, some of them based in tax havens, to cheat the tax office out of €6.6 million ($7.09 million) in 2018, including interest and adjustments. A month later, the so-called Queen of Latin Pop paid €6.6 million to settle the debt.

But on Wednesday prosecutors recommended that the probe be dropped due to “insufficient evidence” and the court investigating the case agreed.

While the court said the “Hips Don’t Lie” singer had committed “irregularities” in her 2018 tax return, it added that “irregularities are not enough to constitute a (criminal) offence against the tax authorities”.

It added that Shakira did not have “the intent to defraud the tax authorities”.

In a separate case, Shakira in November struck a last-minute settlement with prosecutors on the opening day of her trial over a separate tax fraud charge involving income she earned between 2012 and 2014.

In that case prosecutors had sought a jail sentence of over eight years for the singer. They accused her of defrauding the tax authorities of €14.5 million in a case that centred on how much time she was living in Spain.

Shakira denied the charges, saying she only moved to Spain full time in 2015.

By the time the case came to trial, she had already paid €17.45 million to settle her outstanding tax debt, prosecutors said at the time.

‘Emotional toll’

On the day it opened, that trial — which had been due to run for three weeks and hear from some 120 witnesses — was quickly concluded after she agreed to pay a fine of nearly 7.8 million euros.

At the time she explained she had settled “with the best interest of my kids at heart” because she needed “to move past the stress and emotional toll of the last several years” and focus on her career.

Shakira, 47, now lives in Miami with her two sons after splitting from Barcelona star defender Gerard Pique.

He was himself convicted of tax fraud in 2016 and ordered to pay €2.1 million in fines and arrears. Spain’s Supreme Court in 2021 annulled his conviction.

Last year, Shakira’s superstar Argentine producer Bizarrap won the Latin Grammy for song of the year with a track taking a swipe at Pique — who has since retired from football — in which she accuses him of leaving her with a “debt to the tax office”.

“People on my team tried to convince me to change the lyrics, but I’m not a UN diplomat. I am an artist and, above all, a woman,” Shakira told Spanish celebrity magazine ¡Hola!

Spain has in recent years cracked down on celebrities, including football stars such as Argentina’s Lionel Messi and Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo, for unpaid taxes.

Both players were found guilty of evasion and received prison sentences that were waived for first-time offenders.

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