ABU DHABI A convicted globetrotting serial con-woman exposed by XPRESS has resurfaced in her native UK as guest speaker at a Rotary Club meet.
Briton Gill Wallace Hope aka Ambassador Hope was arrested and deported from the UAE following a two-part XPRESS investigative series in July 2014 which blew the lid off her bogus CULA Liquidity Programme where she would collect money from corporates on the pretext of helping people battling financial woes.
To give herself credibility, she had even printed pamphlets claiming tie-ups with the UN, G20 countries and the UAE government. A video of herself posted on social media cited a forged official decree she claimed “instructs all UAE government employees to collaborate and cooperate” with her.
Bailed out
According to UK media, Gill, 54, was sprinted out of the UAE by the UK Foreign Office while her accomplice and fiancé is reportedly still in custody, facing fraud charges in Abu Dhabi.
The setbacks don’t seem to have affected Gill who now claims she has received a Nobel Prize nomination for her project to slash school fees in Abu Dhabi.
“The work I did in Abu Dhabi, that is going to be adopted by the state,” she said in an interview with Birmingham Mail this week.
However, the audience at Rotary Club’s April 5 meet in Warwickshire appeared sceptical about her works in the UAE. “In fact, one Rotarian was so uneasy about the topics aired, she asked the club president if he wanted the speech stopped,”said Birmingham Mail which quoted exptensively from previous XPRESS reports.
A spokesman for Stourport-on-Severn Rotary said they had alerted the organisation about Ms Hope’s presence on the speakers’ list and her background. Sara Aspley, chairman of Stratforward, confirmed Ms Hope had inquired about funding.
