The UGT union called a meeting with about 100 GPS employees last week, asking them to be patient whilst investigations continued. Among those present were workers who had part-time contracts, although they were working full time, and others with no contracts at all, even though they have been working in one of the GPS hotels for more than a month.

Also represented were several “fijos discontinuos” – people on permanent contracts who just work the summer months – but had not yet commenced, and others who had recently been fired. Those still in employment were all advised to carry on working, even if they have not yet been paid May’s wages, in order not to lose their rights.

On Thursday the commercial director of the company, Javier Perelló, was appointed as the new administrator by the judge, giving him ultimate power over all of Ferré’s hotels. In the short term his job will be to oversee the continued operation of these establishments, ensuring the jobs of approximately 1,600 workers currently employed by GPS remain safe, as well as making certain all of the hotels are up and running as planned. Most of the 58 establishments owned by the company are now open. Perelló tried to send a message of calm to the group’s workforce, commenting that the most important matter was to ensure that the employees were paid May’s salaries, although he confirmed he was unsure of the financial state of the company and would be in talks with the company’s bank throughout this week. He also reiterated that “GPS will go from being the most unscrupulous business on the island, and the one which treated the workforce appallingly, to the most transparent and correct enterprise”.

The President of the Hoteliers Federation, Juanjo Riera, remained sceptical about this; GPS is not a member of the association and therefore not regulated in any way. He called for GPS “to play with the same cards as everyone else”, as their overheads are so much lower in terms of the labour force and they do not adhere to regulations in terms of health, safety and hygiene. In this way, GPS are able to offer “ridiculous” deals online, although the level of customer satisfaction is minimal. He reiterated that the vast majority of British tour operators refused to send their clients to hotels within the group, for the lack of maintenance and general absence of professionalism, and that if the group led by Ferré wanted to join his Federation, they would have to regulate everything and bring all of their establishments up to standard.

It was at the beginning of 2005 that “Operation Ballena Blanca” – White Whale – detected that the money laundering in Marbella had a link with Ibiza, and the Income Tax Office began to suspect that the owner of Grupo Playa Sol, Fernando Ferré, was involved. However, further searches last week of the GPS HQ on the outskirts of Ibiza Town, as well as Ferré’s home and the branch of the Crédito Balear bank in Figuretes, did not produce any evidence which showed he had been involved with the money laundering scandal in Marbella. However, whilst looking into his possible connections with this particular scandal, investigators found that Ferré supposedly lived “absolutely illegally”, and had set up a framework of limited companies, in the region of 300, to give credence to the illegality of most of the group, and while most of these companies did actually return tax declarations each year, most never paid anything, as they admitted low income with high overheads, most of which were invented. These companies, however, had nothing to do with the hotels owned by the group.

As the law stands, each autonomous region is responsible for its own affairs, so Ferré used addresses in Madrid and Barcelona to cover his tracks. It was only when the Balearic Tax Department forced Ferré to register all of his companies on the island that the full scale of what was occurring actually became clear. The judge and the Tax Department will now take time trawling over all of the files collected from the company’s offices, and the private residence of the man, who authorities claimed, thought was untouchable.

Origins: - Little is known about his early life; he was born in Tarragona in Catalunya. Many years ago he owned a water bottling plant in Sant Joan, but he left the island shortly after the business failed. However, he was not gone for long and later re-appeared and started in the hotel trade, buying small, old establishments, paid for with funds from Andorra, where he still has interests. His idea was to create a chain of low cost, no frills, tourist businesses, and in 2001 he was the owner of 40 hotels, most of them old and antiquated. Whilst most hoteliers on the island, including the Fiesta Group owned by the Matutes family, were looking to expand their network towards the Caribbean, Ferré, bankrolled by the Banco Credito Balear which offered him loans with very low interest, began buying up properties in vast numbers. Last year GPS paid a total of €11 million in interest. He has been described as “a giant with feet of clay, disorganized, suspicious and avaricious, with the aspect of a snake-charmer”.