Friday, January 24, 2020 - 10:48 Joe Garcia

GBC is bottomless pit for Gibraltar's taxpayers

*£5 MILLION PER ANNUM OF PUBLIC MONEY FOR RUNNING EXPENSES

*£8 MILLION FOR NEW BUILDING

*£3 MILLION FOR NEW EQUIPMENT

My probe into GBC, which has always been something of a secret society, began last Christmas!

It started when I asked the Gibraltar Regulatory Authority, which has a broadcasting division, if we could be supplied with the latest GBC annual report, whereupon Broacasting Regulatory Manager Francis Trenado said: "Your request for GBC's annual report should be sent to GBC."

It made me wonder if there was something strange going on, so I asked Gerard Teuma, GBC's Chief Executive. He said: "At present we do not have recent published accounts due to an administrative accounting issue that is being considered by the Government, and we are awaiting a steer from them. We are hopeful that we will be in a position to finalise the outstanding end of year accounts soon and table them in Parliament. I will ensure to send these to you as soon as I am able to do so thereafter."

Since GBC is required by law to publish their accounts, non-compliance with statutory obligations, is strange indeed.

Hence, I took the matter up with the Chief Minister Fabian Picardo. I asked him: "Can you explain what is going on, as GBC is under statutory obligation to produce annual accounts."

Said Mr Picardo: "I understand that as is the case with a number of statutory bodies of this type the issue is pensions. This is being addressed by the Financial Secretary so that publication of the accounts can progress."

Well, well, well. It so happens that minister Albert Isola had been given broadcasting as one of his responsibilities, so I put him in the hot seat.