Thursday, September 25, 2008

Telmicro - the saga continues

The Guardia Civil claim that Telmico are guilty of fraud amounting to more that 500 million euros according to reports in the Spanish press.

Operation “Scimitar was carried out in Alicante, Murcia and Almeria during August to dismantle the network for illegal distribution of British TV channels. The operators had set up three companies with licences to to distribute free to air British TV to the area hence the claim by Telmicro that they are a legal company with all the proper licenses in place.

When Sogecable, who have the rights to distribute certain channels via their cable network, found that Telmicro were distributing the same programmes illegally they denounced the company. However it wasn't just the odd channel which Telmicro were distributing. Their package included BBC, ITV and Sky channels non of which they had rights to.

To make matters worse, Telmicro claimed that they had 17,000 customers each of whom had paid 590€ for installation and were paying between 18 and 22€ per month rental. In turns out that they have in excess of 60,000 customers which might explain why the Guardia seized 5 million euros in cash from their premises. As one of my neighbours commented, "no company would keep that much cash on their premises unless they had something to hide."

The Court of Instruction Number 1 of Torrevieja is the one that is continuing to direct the investigation.

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