The story behind our connection problems

Today we went up to the Pedrera to pay our money for April's connection. Keith McClure's parents, who live on Calle Alemania, were there to collect the fees on his behalf. They told us that Keith will now maintain the connection because he has sufficient customers to cover his costs. So that is good news. The bad news is that there are still people who now cannot use their VoIP phones because of the changes that Keith has made to the system.

Residents from El Raso came of worse though. They had their internet and satellite telephone connection severed in December 2006. Some of them had only been connected for barely a week having paid 449€ for the privilege. The companies involved were Wi-Surf and Clear Communication SL now both a thing of the past.

Barry Leeson, who was the originator of Clear Communications, sold his company to Keith McClure and it became Clear Communications SL, a registered Spanish company. For this McClure paid a five figure sum. According to Keith McClure he had bought all the dishes, routers, transmitters and lines from Barry Leeson as well as his company. McClure then employed Leeson, provided him with transport, a salary and a two year contract.

Barry Leeson is now facing a court case for theft and fraud. According to Keith McCLure, Leeson paid himself 6,600 euros clearing all funds from the Clear Communications SL bank account and quit just before Christmas.

The resultant lack of funds meant that all Wi- Surf and Clear Communications SL customers lost their connections. No line rental could be paid to Telefonica and they cut them off.

Keith McClure is also interested in his satellite dish that connects all the wireless internet connections from users to the Telefonica lines. He says he owns these and accuses Barry Leeson of treating them as his own to the extent of moving the main dish to another building in Almoradi.

Keith McClure was a 30 per cent shareholder in Wi-Surf. He also owned 100% of Clear Communications SL. He claims that Barry Leeson had not only taken funds from the company bank account that were not due to him, has left customers with no connection but is now using the equipment he sold to Keith to set up another internet company. This is the fraud element of the denuncia issued by Keith. It would appear that the resolution to this problem will lie with the courts.

Keith McClure claims to have lost thousands of euros in this venture which is why he was considering pulling the plug on our connection. The last straw was obviously realising that a number of customers hadn't paid for the five months of service they had received since November.