The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority claims to be looking at 250,000 Premier FX transaction records in an attempt to trace where over €10 million of clients’ funds were whisked away to before the company was shut down.

The company, owned and run by Peter Rexstrew, persuaded expats in Portugal and Algarve property owners living outside the country, to deposit cash with Premier FX on the promise of benefiting from exchange rate fluctuations and interest payments. Significant sums, often for house purchases, were left on deposit and a select few also were paid interest on deposits.

Two policies for UK passports that currently happily coexist, until March 30th.

Standard for passport validity across the world is 10 years and until 2018, the UK gave flexibility to renewal applicants, allowed under EU rules, by crediting new passports with up to nine months of unexpired time from the old one.

Both Uber and Cabify, the app based transport services, are suspending all operations in Barcelona as from Friday due to a rule imposed by the Catalan government ordering rides to delay 15 minutes after being booked.

Local taxi drivers have won after strikes demanding controls to regulate the spread of the popular and cheaper alternative transport option.

The Portuguese Tourism Confederation boss told Portugal’s president of his concern about Brexit, in particular the processing problems that may be encountered when UK visitors fly in to Faro airport.

After a meeting with Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, the head of the Portuguese Tourism Confederation, Francisco Calheiros, said that, in the absence of an agreement to leave the EC, leading to a 'hard Brexit', the government's "proposed measures* will not solve the problem of more than one million Britons entering Portugal with the status of third-country nationals, this means more border control."

The head of Grupo Os Mosqueteiros, which owns the Intermarché brand of supermarkets in Portugal, delivered a fat cheque to the Refúgio Boim Ascensão* in Faro yesterday.
 
The €15,000 donation was the result of the ‘votes for happy holidays’ promotion that ran over the Christmas and New Year period. Shoppers were asked to send their good wishes to four institutions, among them the Refúgio Aboim Ascensão.

A major cocaine bust left Judicial Police officers with 2.5 tons of cocaine to look after. The shipment from Latin America is worth around €125 million and was seized at dawn on Wednesday with the support of the Air Force and the Portuguese Navy.

A Panama registered ocean going tug was seized the 11 people on board, all eastern European, were arrested and have been detained in Lisbon.

General crime and violent crime declined in the Algarve in 2018, according to data released on January 29.

Despite a scarcity of resources available to the the Algarve region’s National Republican Guard (GNR), reported crime was down, but not by much.

Transport Minister, Pedro Marquês, presented 20 projects. his national railway network improvement plan, in February 2016. By now, eight should have been completed and 11 being worked on – a triumph for investment in Portugal’s infrastructure, if the timetable has been anywhere near adhered to.

The results are that six projects are being worked on and nothing actually has been completed, a success rate of under 9% for the Ferroria 2020 investment programme that is dogged by delays and the suspicion of official foot-dragging.