Druglord

by Graham Johnson

  Now he was faced with a decision. Should he sign off this document suspecting what he did, knowing full well that it might lead to credit for Haase and Bennett, or should he put the kibosh on the whole wretched affair? This was the question he had been faced with when he first suspected that they may have been colluding in the gun plants. But at that time, in the summer of 1994, he had been forced to look at it through purely lawman’s eyes. At the end of the day, the operation was removing scores of dangerous weapons from the street, directly from the underworld, no less, which otherwise may have been used in crimes. In the summer of 1994, Liverpool was in the middle of a massive gun war and terrorists were plotting to blow up prestige targets all over the UK. Even if the finds were based on skewed, self-serving intelligence, they were de facto reducing the amount of weapons on Britain’s streets. No one could argue with that. And protecting the public, like that of any lawman, was Phil Connelly’s primary purpose. Connelly reasoned that the operation was an ‘efficient’ way of removing guns from the street. So he decided not to rock the boat and carry on the flow of information. There were also other strong arguments. In his report, Cook was correct in pointing out that there was not always time to mount a big investigation around each find to hunt down the owners. At the end of the day, if there were any issues about catching those responsible, it was the job of Merseyside Police, the investigating body, to see to them.

  PHIL CONNELLY: The majority of reports from Cook would be by telephone. Cook was in Manchester; John Furnell and I were based in London. The fact that Haase/Bennett were giving information was within my knowledge. It would not have required my approval, although I am sure that Cook registered them as informants. I was aware throughout that Haase/Bennett through their solicitor, Tony Nelson, were giving information about arms caches which were being found in Liverpool and Manchester.

  It was my decision to continue with the seizures even after it became likely that they could not have such information without being a part of it. I was aware that Haase and Bennett had access to mobile phones whilst in prison.

  Consequently, I was asked to sign a letter prepared by Cook to indicate the extent of assistance given by Haase/Bennett and to be placed before the trial judge. This was in line with normal Customs procedure. The subject of Haase/Bennett would often be discussed between myself and Cook.

  I was not over-aware of the suggestion that large amounts of money were changing hands. I was told that Haase/Bennett were trying to influence other co-defendants to plead guilty. I am now employed by the United Nations as a chief technical adviser to the African Seaports Project. Paul Cook is still with Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise. We remain in touch.

  The report was handed to Judge David Lynch. His job was to pass sentence on Haase and Bennett. Based purely on their crimes and the fact that they had been caught red-handed, they should have been given something close to the maximum penalty, which, in comparable cases, was 15 to 20 years. But the credit earned from the gun plants would then have to be subtracted. In return for their services, Haase and Bennett wanted all of their sentences to be cancelled. But there were two problems. First, bound by law, the judge was not powerful enough to annul the whole tariff. Second, if the sentence was quashed so suddenly after the trial, it would become obvious to the Turks and the rest of the underworld that they had turned informants. The Turks, whom Haase and Bennett had promised to help free in return for guilty pleas, would know that they had been thoroughly betrayed. Mr V would not be happy. And Haase’s and Bennett’s lives would be in danger. To boot, there was a risk that the whole deal would be exposed to public scrutiny.

  Faced with wholly exceptional circumstances, Judge David Lynch put the sentencing decision in the hands of a higher authority. He referred the case to the Home Office. Judge Lynch probably understood that Haase and Bennett both qualified for a Royal Pardon based on the Strangeways incident and the home secretary was the only authority who could exercise that right. Lynch wrote a letter to the home secretary and probably enclosed a copy of Paul Cook’s secret report. (The exact contents of the judge’s letter and the discussions that took place have not been made public, and this account is speculation based on interviews with several sources.) For the time being, the credit would not be given. If the Home Office decided to implement a sentence reduction later, then it would happen after the trial finished, outside the realms of the court.

  While the Home Office deliberated, Judge Lynch went about sentencing Haase and Bennett in the normal way, along with all of the other defendants. On 22 August 1995, the eight-man heroin gang was jailed for a total of 110 years. Haase, then 46, was sentenced to an unprecedentedly severe 18 years, as was Paul Bennett, then 31. They had £840,000 in cash confiscated. Croker, then 31, was jailed for 14 years and had £110,000 confiscated. Judge David Lynch said, ‘It is rare that the courts deal with people so high up the ladder. It must be marked by a heavy sentence.’ The five Turks also received hefty sentences. Suleyman Ergun, then 26, got 14 years and 9 months. Yilmaz Kaya, then 29, got 20 years and had £200,000 confiscated. Mehmet Ansen, then 54, got 8 years. Bulent Onay, then 39, got 14 years. Manuk Ocecki, then 37, got 4 years. In addition, Mark Drew, for his small part in the operation, got three years.

  On the face of it, it was a major coup for Customs and Excise, who were still reeling from the fallout from the collapsed Curtis Warren case three years earlier. A senior Customs investigator who worked on the case – but was unaware of the secret deal to free Haase – could barely contain his jubilation: ‘We were delighted with the result. For us, it was a turning point in the fight against the big players. We had managed to bring down a complicated international gang successfully. And we were confident we could do it again. The sentences were deservedly harsh – without time off for good behaviour. And we were confident that Haase would get as little as possible off because he is notoriously uncooperative – he was expected to be released in 2013. We couldn’t have wished for better. He was a dangerous man best kept off the streets.’

  That was the public face that Customs wanted to portray. But behind the scenes, the dilemmas were still there. At the Home Office, one of Michael Howard’s civil servants summoned Customs boss Phil Connelly to discuss Haase and Bennett’s case. He was asked a simple question, along the lines of ‘Would the police have been able to recover the amount of weapons that they did without the help of Haase and Bennett?’ In true civil-servant style, Connelly was obliged to give a simple oneword answer, preventing him from explaining or adding meaning. He said, ‘No.’ The civil servant did not ask whether Connelly thought the plants were phoney. And Connelly did not volunteer his suspicions.

  PHIL CONNELLY: I am aware that the judge sent the letter to the Home Office or I myself delivered the letter. I know the letter went there as I was summoned to see one of Michael Howard’s civil servants . . . I think they wanted to see someone rather than just words on a page.

  Haase’s devious con was casting a dark, complicated shadow over the case. Though most Customs officers didn’t know it yet, much of their hard work was already being undone at a rapid rate, as Haase and Bennett sped along the road to freedom seemingly unhindered. However, there was one glimmer of hope, one stroke of luck which seemed to prove briefly that right was on their side. In a million-to-one shot, The Vulcan was suddenly captured. He was nabbed in Holland during a routine arrest. No one could believe their luck.

  The Vulcan had not been seen in the UK since the summer of 1993 when he had flown in to pave the way for the 100-kilo importation that led to Haase’s arrest, before quickly flying out again. However, greed had got the better of him, and despite the destruction of his Liverpool arm he had continued to smuggle heroin. Determined Customs officers, though, circulated his details to drug liaison officers (DLOs) all over Europe in the hope that they might pick up his trail again, knowing that the cocky Turk was back in business.

  Almost immediately after his north London and Liverpool cells had been taken out, in late summe
r 1993, The Vulcan switched control of his UK operation into the hands of the Brixton Connection, a south London-based Turkish ring employing some of the residue of Kaya’s gang. For instance, the on-the-run Manuk Ocecki, who had escaped capture in the main raids, was tasked to liaise with a Dutch smuggler on consignments being brought in at Felixstowe docks by lorry. The Vulcan did not dare come back into the UK himself for fear of being arrested, so he decided to run everything remotely, inevitably leading to a decrease in control and an increased risk of mistakes.

  The first misfortune struck less than two months after Haase was arrested. Manuk and the Dutchman were picked up in September 1993 by the same Lima 3 Customs team that had nailed the Liverpool mob. The under-pressure Vulcan immediately flew to Holland to regroup once again. Over the next two years, he would be forced to spend a lot of time in the ‘flat place’ – and Amsterdam rather than London became his EU HQ.

  In 1995, his false papers aroused the suspicion of a Dutch copper, and he was arrested. A sharp-eyed DLO at the Hague informed the British Limas of the good news and The Vulcan was brought back to the UK at once. Customs were over the moon, but almost immediately The Vulcan began fighting the legal process. While on remand in Walton Prison with Ergun, he claimed that the authorities had got the wrong man and demanded a formal identification. Everything hinged on this. If it failed, he would walk free.

  A formal ID parade was arranged at a Liverpool police station so that Customs officers could pick him out. The six officers who had observed him at close quarters during Operation Floor were asked to identify him under strict conditions. By this time, the Vulcan had hired the best lawyers, and one of the six officers failed to give a positive identification. It was enough for his lawyers to make a case and, unbelievably, The Vulcan was set free at once.

  The only response that shell-shocked Customs officer Harry Ferguson could muster was, ‘You’re joking.’ Once again, he and his colleagues were probably thinking that perhaps they were on the losing side.

  17

  BRIBE ALLEGATIONS ONE (THE INSIDER PAY-OFF), TWO AND THREE (THE LONDON PAYMENTS)

  Following the trial, it has been alleged that Haase made a number of huge payments to help influence his bid for freedom. He and Bennett were still in prison awaiting news of the request for leniency and the Home Office was deliberating whether to grant them a Royal Pardon. All was seemingly going well – but cracks were beginning to appear. Other Customs and police officers were beginning to raise suspicions about the validity of Haase’s intelligence. Underworld gossips, who could barely contain their delight at being involved in a scam to hoodwink the system, were breaking the code of silence to tell startled pals of the fantastic scheme. The family of the Strangeways gun victim Thomas Bourke were investigating a potential miscarriage of justice – and significantly had already linked the scandal to a deliberate ploy by Haase. Deadly rumours that Haase and Bennett were grasses were flying round the penal system. And it wouldn’t be long before the Turks would realise that they had been betrayed and that their million quid had been spent exclusively on benefiting Haase and Bennett and no one else. Who would want to explain this to Mr V? All in all, the immediate future did not look rosy.

  The pair were keeping too many balls in the air and at any moment it looked as though it could come ontop big-time. The longer it went on, the more likely it was that the supergrass scam would be exposed as a fraud. Haase and Bennett’s priority was to speed up their release, but they were getting frustrated. For over two years on remand, they had given it their all, played their best shots to get out. The plotting and scheming was so intense that it would give them headaches: the mobile phones, the money, the gun plants, the meetings. They had given everything to Customs and now they wanted payback. Haase wanted to give it one last push, to take some bigger risks. He knew he was so close to getting out that he only needed to close the deal once and for all.

  Haase’s plan was the oldest trick in the book: the pay-off. He started bribing anyone who had their hand out in the hope that this would speed up the process. The payments would also be useful in fighting a rearguard action against snooping officials asking too many questions about the shady gun plants. Mystery surrounds the movement of millions of pounds in cash from London to Liverpool, of money changing hands between Haase’s men and shadowy individuals. Five pay-offs were allegedly sent to officials.

  Haase’s story is that the first bribe was paid to someone connected to his case. At first, that person refused Haase’s offer of money but later took it when it looked like Haase had a good chance of being released.

  JOHN HAASE: There was a man involved with our case; he received £100k paid in cash by No-Neck. We had this man’s mobile number and I could phone him 24 hours a day. No-Neck had his number as well. No-Neck phoned him and met him and gave him £100k in cash. I’d already sorted this man from day one; the main thing he wanted was information – money was secondary. Halfway through the case, I offered him money and he said yes. He was a bit shy. I forced this on him but he took the money. He was a bit weak.

  I had his personal mobile. Yeah. I could use it whenever.

  He received money a year later. The letter to the judge was already getting done before we went to court. Our man on the inside told us that all was going well. We got him paid well before the Paisley Magistrates’. He received £100,000. No-Neck had a payment method. He did it as much as me. There are no tapes of it. But I sorted all this out before No-Neck knew about it. I sorted the man from day one. I asked him from day one did he want any money. He didn’t say yes or no. He said, ‘Let’s get the information first.’

  He wanted information first. He couldn’t just accept money and go, ‘I recommend so and so . . .’ He wanted information, even if it was shite like that, the minute of the guns going off [intelligence pinpointing a gun stash and the time it would be at the location]. That’s the reason he done it.

  He should have twigged from day one that the information was going nowhere. Work it out. You go there, there. Even like, say, London. There was a bad robbery on a pharmaceutical warehouse. How did I know that on the streets of London? I had me feelers out, anything going give me it. If a gun was being used there, dumped there, give it to me, I’ll buy it off you. People from Sheffield, Manchester. It was only because I met these people before doing another sentence that I knew what to do. Bennett, he didn’t have a fucking clue. He didn’t know anyone. He only knows Liverpool and they are useless, that lot.

  But the bloke wanted information. Money was secondary. He agreed to accept the dough about halfway through the case. After about 12 months.

  The second bribe was £1 million taken by a drug-money courier called John ‘Paddy’ Scanlon from Chris No-Neck in Liverpool to a Turkish café in Paddington, west London, allegedly under the orders of Haase and Bennett. Scanlon had worked as a professional bagman for No-Neck and Bennett since 1989, before Haase joined the drugs business. His job was purely and simply to ferry drug money between big dealers. Often, the loads were £500,000, for which he was paid about £5,000 a time. He was very conscientious. He wore a shirt and tie and drove an anonymous salesman’s car and planned his journeys with precision. He was his own man, autonomous once he had possession of the money. For security reasons, he was allowed to take as long as he liked to drop the money off within a certain timeframe so that he could vary his movements to avoid being followed and intercepted by police or tax-men gangs.

  Scanlon received a call from No-Neck, who used The Bank Clerk to move money short distances from the war chest to places in Liverpool. It is believed that The Bank Clerk had delivered the money from the central stash to a food shop on Utting Avenue ready for collection by Scanlon. Scanlon remained quiet about the alleged money-drop for many years but decided to talk after suspecting Haase and Bennett had violated the underworld code by informing on Thomas Bourke, the Turks and others. He first revealed details of the bribe in a phone call to an investigator in which he gave scant details about the alleged
bribes.

  JOHN ‘PADDY’ SCANLON: The drop-off was around Edgware Road near Paddington. I drove there. The money was in one of those things, the wheelie suitcases. I knew the man I gave it to because I had a phone call. He would be there, blah, blah, at such and such a time. I was told it was a million pounds.

  The person I got it off in Liverpool; I was given the address of the drop then. And off I went. I didn’t question what it was for. It doesn’t work that way. Fuck all to do with me.

  In September 2004, John ‘Paddy’ Scanlon arranged to tell his story for the first time under strictly controlled conditions at Ken Darcy’s house in Stockbridge Village, Liverpool. He feared for his security. In addition, he was worried about criminal charges resulting from a confession. Scanlon, a large man in his late 40s, was seated in the kitchen. He agreed to talk to an investigator in the next room through an open door to preserve a degree of anonymity. He wore a baseball cap and spoke with a thick Scouse accent from the side of his mouth.

  JOHN ‘PADDY’ SCANLON: I used to do the work for them. So I got a phone call to pick dough up from a food shop in Utting Avenue. I had to take it down the smoke to meet someone up from Madame Tussauds, on Edgware Road, on the corner where Paddington busie station is.

  The person in the shop, who I knew, handed over the bag and said, ‘Here’s the bangers.’ [Meaning bangers and mash – cockney rhyming slang for cash.] I was told it was a million. I got a phone call the morning of the drop telling me I had to be at the café in London by teatime. The drop-off was at a café in west London.