GcMAF boss on the run as France seeks arrest

Noakes, 66, is facing nine fresh charges under a European Arrest Warrant, upheld by a UK court in November.

The former Immuno Biotech boss was bailed at Westminster Magistrates’ Court but has since been denied a final appeal against his extradition to France.

On Friday 13 December, he failed to attend Bournemouth Police Station under the terms of the warrant, sparking ‘ongoing’ efforts to find the businessman, Dorset Police said.

The nine offences relate to the sale and distribution of the cancer ‘cure’, GcMAF, from France.

In 2018, a UK court jailed Noakes for 15 months after he admitted money laundering, and supplying and selling the unlicensed medicine.

The latest arrest relates to Noakes’s alleged move to Normandy in 2015 after his UK operation was shut down following a raid by the medicines regulator.

Prosecutors believe that between June 2015 and March 2017, numerous sites in and around Cherbourg were used to store and ship GcMAF to 50 different countries, generating up to nine million euros through online sales.

At an earlier court appearance, Noakes said the European warrant was inaccurate and that he had already been sentenced once in England for the offences in question.

In an online post, Noakes was quoted as saying his lawyer had submitted an appeal to the UK Supreme Court asking it to ‘call off their police dogs’.

But permission to launch the appeal has been refused, the Supreme Court confirmed.

Noakes’s lawyer, John Smith, has not responded to our questions.

The website, which is campaigning against Noakes’s extradition, also claimed the former Immuno Biotech boss had a ‘near miss’ when officers tried to arrest him on Wednesday 11 December. They were left ‘clutching thin air,’ it said.

Noakes’s last known address was in Plymouth, given in court in November. Before his imprisonment in 2018, he was living in Waldershare, near Dover, in Kent.

His former business partner, Lynda Thyer, has already been extradited to France on charges relating to the sale of GcMAF.

The drug was marketed as a cure for a number of conditions, including HIV and autism.

The Guernsey-headquartered company behind its sale made nearly £8m, of which more than £1m was spent by Noakes on planes, boats and vintage cars, a court heard in 2018.

Dorset Police said they were searching for Noakes as he had ties to the area. At his last court appearance his passport was kept by authorities, and he was ordered not to leave England and Wales.

‘We were made aware of a European Arrest Warrant relating to this individual and enquiries are ongoing to locate him,’ a Dorset Police spokesman said.