The Cartel The Inside Story of Britain's Biggest Drugs Gang

by Graham Johnson

  CHAPTER 13

  VOYAGE

  1989

  THE STILL SEAWATER glistened like a plane of apatite crystal. The crew were dozing below, gaining momentary relief from the laser-like, searing, bedazzling heat that gave no quarter during daylight. The silence was isolation-tank quiet, broken only by the gentle kiss of the water on the hull and the occasional toll from the gong-like sea bell that Scarface had bought from a tourist shop in Guadeloupe.

  ‘Action stations,’ he suddenly shouted. ‘Fucking hell – action stations!’ The blast of his voice triggered an explosion of kinetic frenzy, as the crew jumped from their bunks and got into the zone. Scarface never slept, preferring to scour the horizon with his military-surplus binoculars that he’d bought at a yacht chandler’s in Cape Verde a few months previously. His vigilance had paid off. A US Coast Guard cutter was skimming towards him fast, seeming almost vertical in its haste, like a dolphin doing a trick. Suddenly, Scarface’s UHF radio crackled to life with the USCG call sign, ordering them to stop and prepare for boarding.

  Ominously the voice said: ‘We will not shoot unless fired upon.’

  The stealthy black boat slowed down only to bank slightly one kilometre off Scarface’s stern, seamlessly launching two small inflatables into the sea. One took position 100 yards off Scarface’s starboard bow, the other equidistant but to port. Upon announcing their presence, the American commander enquired about Scarface’s destination, last port of call, number of firearms aboard and number of passengers.

  The cutter came alongside, the forward gunner sweeping Scarface’s deck. Though it was daylight, a fiercely powerful spotlight, so hot that it made the water bubble with steam, was brought to bear to dazzle and intimidate the target.

  ‘US Coast Guard. This is a routine safety inspection,’ the loudhailer boomed. But Scarface noticed that two or three of the heavily body-armoured sea warriors standing on the deck of the cutter sported Drug Enforcement Agency insignia.

  Poncho leaned back, grinning. ‘Scarface told me he’d thought, “Fuck. There goes my 1,000 kilos. There goes the rest of my life.”’

  Meanwhile, 4,000 miles away in Liverpool, the Cartel was maturing nicely. It was 1989. A number. Another summer. The Cartel had scraped through the heroin drought and a London-based gang known as the Turkish Connection began to re-establish supplies. Crack use had levelled off, but then unaccountably its growth began to rocket again. It seemed that heroin and cocaine use, somehow, worked in tandem.

  The Analyst noticed three changes. First, there was an explosion of ‘poly-users’ – addicts who took heroin and cocaine together. The other two changes were on the business side: money laundering mushroomed and independent dealers began to operate alongside the Cartel.

  The Analyst said, ‘By this time the heroin users had chaotic lifestyles. Crack was introduced and it was a form of mixed medication. The drug dealers started to make serious money. They’d been around for a few years, but crack brings with it a windfall.’

  The superficial wealth turned into proper financial wealth. Firmly back on its feet, the Cartel invested heavily in the fabric of Merseyside, snapping up bars and property at breakneck speed. The late 1980s property boom became a vehicle for legitimising their money.

  At the same time, a new group of independent drug dealers began to operate outside of the Cartel and under the radar of the police. The buoyant black economy could now support various sizes and shapes of organisations. The independents didn’t want to be gangsters or hugely wealthy, shunning heroin and crack in favour of low-key 100-kilo-a-time cannabis deals. Unlike the hot-headed and vengeful Cartel members, the independents were stoical, never getting involved in disputes and always writing off debts to preserve stability. They regularly kept £100,000 cash in their houses but rarely got taxed because few people knew the full extent of their business.

  The Analyst began studying the independents: ‘If he’s selling to you, you’ll agree on £100,000 worth of cannabis and that’s what you’ll get. You will get the gear. He will get his money. Simple economics, no credit, no pressure.

  ‘They saw that there was the aggressive environment in Toxteth, where there was also violence between rivals. They saw a gap in the market, which was based on brains not brawn.’

  Everyday working people formed small syndicates to cash in. A psychiatric nurse joined up with a personal trainer. A group of taxi drivers formed a kitty to trade cannabis in much the same way as a share club. The independents were seen as liberal, but conversely their business ethics were puritan. Credit was always refused. Reason, not trust, was the stock-in-trade, because if deals went wrong independents had no way to rectify problems.

  The Analyst said, ‘It’s your typical feller who lives in a normal house. The only difference is that he may have lions on the stone pillars outside his house in north Liverpool somewhere. He might have a couple of businesses, shop fronts, sunbed shops: businesses that provide a service for cash, so that money can be laundered.

  ‘They are quite intelligent. They set themselves a threshold of criminality that they are not prepared to cross.’

  The independents targeted specific communities. One wholesaler only supplied cannabis to dealers who in turn only distributed in sixth-form colleges. Sixth formers didn’t want to go knocking on doors in a bad part of town. The social nature became more acceptable. Another only supplied workmates and people connected to a Sunday League. Wannabes and show-offs didn’t last long in the smaller, stabler markets.

  The Analyst said, ‘I remember we raided a hall of residence and we seized a shoebox full of cannabis. The student went to prison. His career was ruined and his parents were asking why.’

  By 1989, even the street-level crime groups within the Cartel became more sophisticated. The more intelligent approach of the independent combined with the organisational skills of the higher Cartel members began to rub off on the lower orders. Gone was the Klondike, fill-your-boots-while-it-lasts approach. Dealers started applying business principles to the drugs industry. Many started buying investment properties to rent out to the expanding student population.

  Often they stayed within their own comfort zone, as regards money laundering, such as the pub and club sector and door security. As a consequence, a plethora of security companies suddenly opened up that would become the building blocks of organised crime across the country. In turn, the security companies left the Cartel ideally poised to exploit the source of the next windfall – the dance era.

  Meanwhile, ex-heroin dealer and shotgun merchant Dylan Porter was beginning a four-year sentence, having been convicted of possession of a firearm.

  But things were looking up for Kaiser and Scarface. According to Poncho, in late spring 1989, Scarface had moved into the next stage of Operation Swagger, the plan to smuggle 1,000 kilos of heroin from South America. Just three months before his boat was stopped by US Coast Guards, the planning was still being carried out. First, Scarface had taken the small yacht that had been purchased especially on a test trip. Along with a couple of girlfriends and several team members, Scarface had sailed to Cape Verde, a collection of ten islands in the North Atlantic 570 km off the coast of West Africa. The Cape was a popular stopover for the yachting set. Scarface was cash rich. Though overpriced, he bought lots of equipment from a chandler’s on the island, including military-standard binoculars and a powerful UHF radio.

  The dummy run went like a dream. Scarface discovered that he was a natural sailor and felt confident enough to go live for real. In June 1989, Scarface set off from Amsterdam on the three-month round trip to South America. Rammed tight with supplies, conditions were cramped: only two people could sleep in the cabin and one on deck under the stars. The South American was let go when they reached the Caribbean after he got on Scarface’s nerves. He was replaced by a second Dutchman.

  The pick-up in Venezuela was smooth. The 1,000-kilo consignment was loaded and sealed within secret compartments in the wooden hull. However, the first leg of the r
eturn journey proved fretful. From Curaçao, at first they made a beeline north-east, setting a diagonal course straight for Europe. The plan was to avoid American-owned Puerto Rico like the plague and crash through the natural barrier that formed the Lesser Antilles, at the centre of the archipelago around Montserrat. But they received some last-minute intel that the British were stepping up patrols around colonies such as the Virgin Islands and Anguilla. Dutch Marines had also been spotted at Sint Eustatius and Saba.

  Instinctively, as though he was chasing through the backstreets of Toxteth, Scarface swung a right and headed deep into the southernmost parts of the Caribbean Sea. St Lucia and St Vincent were usually blind spots for the drug-sniffing authorities, but to his disappointment Scarface found the waters heading towards Barbados swamped with DEA gunboats and US Coast Guard interceptors. Since the invasion of Grenada six years earlier, the US was now treating the island as its own real estate. Coastal security had nearly reached mainland levels of paranoia. But by now Scarface had no choice. He’d have to take the chase and take his chances.

  Skilfully, Scarface avoided several run-ins by sailing off chart and swinging in between islands – literally dots of palm-fringed sands where they’d sit in a cove, waiting for the fast boats and choppers to pass. But one day a US government ship got them in their sights.

  ‘Action stations,’ Scarface shouted. ‘Get out of bed now. We’re getting a tug off the Americans.’ Thinking on his feet, he ordered the two Dutchmen, half-asleep after being woken, to change into their tight-fitting, brightly coloured trunks. ‘When they get alongside, act gay. Camp it up. I want the soldiers to think we’re homosexuals. I don’t want them hanging around.’

  Fortunately, the aristocrat, whom they’d nicknamed ‘the Baron’, looked the part. He had longish hair, a YMCA moustache and a sinewy, sun-kissed body. Scarface was also thin and deeply tanned. Quickly, he covered his chest in oil. Within seconds, the US cutter was alongside. Scarface invited the armed US agents to come aboard – in his best Lily Savage gay Scouse voice.

  With the barrel of a high-calibre belt-fed machine gun sweeping the deck, Scarface kept his cool. The boarding party consisted of three USCG members and two DEA officers. The first cop pointed a handgun at Scarface. Two others threatened the Dutchmen with shotguns. Immediately the USCG commanding officer went below for a ‘safety inspection’, to check the bilge pump and general seaworthiness of the vessel. He counted the flares, fire extinguishers and deck throwables, such as life jackets, rubber rings and inflatable buoys. At one point when he inspected various tanks, he got painfully close to the cocaine. But Scarface knew his job was maritime law – it was the DEA’s job to rummage for drugs.

  Meanwhile, the DEA interrogated Scarface on the fly bridge. Scarface blagged his way around the false IDs. When asked the purpose of his visit, he told the officer that they were some of the many gay hedonists returning from the debauched party season in the Caribbean.

  Poncho said, ‘He played on the stereotypes of the gay Westerners on holiday and the homoerotic US soldiers who are too macho for their own good. One of them was pointing an assault rifle at the Dutchmen, who were sweating. It was cheesy, but it worked.’

  Scarface began to flirt with the DEA officers and invited them to check down below in the cabin, where the 1,000 kilos were hidden behind a few millimetres of varnished marine ply. The DEA officers declined, making just a few cursory checks of the wheelhouse. They glanced at the paperwork and declined the offer of a more intimate search.

  Poncho said, ‘Scarface was a clever bastard. He knew that the searches and inspections often took more than an hour. But he knew they wouldn’t want to spend an hour with three semi-naked gay men in a confined space. The DEA gave them a walkover. After that it was plain sailing all the way back to Europe.’

  Scarface loved it: he was blown away when one day a family of whales started following the boat, shooting up water out of their blowholes and jumping high into the air and crashing down. He went all hippyish, loving the freedom, just wearing shorts all day on the deck. His body got tanned more deeply and he went sinewy and strong.

  Back in Liverpool, Scarface’s gang were working at the less adventurous end of the chain. Poncho was in charge of selling crack cocaine on the street. He was in partnership with one of the Cartel’s more unusual franchises – an African church.

  The church had been smuggling heroin into the UK for eight years following the riots. The minister used his position as a cover and his flock as runners.

  Poncho said, ‘Then we started the crack off and then the powder, selling shots in little bags, things like that. The local lads were natural drug dealers, and with the black connection as well, it made it very strong. I had a crew of my own – there were six of us. Two went to jail. Two are dead. The other one: his head’s gone through all this. I got stabbed – they gave me an hour to live. Everyone was fighting for position.’

  Frequently, there was in-fighting along racial divides, but the Cartel always stopped for money.

  CHAPTER 14

  RELOADED

  1989

  OPERATION SWAGGER WAS entering its final phase. Scarface’s yacht had cleared the West Indies and was belting across the Atlantic, full speed ahead. So far they had been at sea on the return journey for a month. Since being stopped by the DEA, they had had two weeks of plain sailing across the Mid-Atlantic. Now there was a little over ten days left till home, and they found themselves snaking around the west coast of Africa and into the home straight. Scarface began doing press-ups on the deck, shaking off the hippy cobwebs. From now on, there’d be no more pot smoking to while away the hours. He needed to stay straight, prepare himself for life back in the big, bad city. Back to business.

  The drop-off in Europe was the riskiest part of the mission. According to Poncho, instead of beaching the load along an isolated stretch of coast in Spain or Portugal, Scarface decided to go for broke and crash the port.

  ‘Fuck it,’ he told the crew, ‘I’m going to sail her right into the Dam.’ The Dutch aristocrat winced at the prospect: his payday was in sight, but he knew the dangers that lurked behind the liberal facade of his home country. The port of Amsterdam handled 70 million tons of goods annually and was the fourth most important in Europe. But the sea lanes were exceptionally busy and patrolled by some of the heaviest maritime surveillance in the world. If you got caught trafficking, you could expect heavier sentences than in the UK, contrary to popular belief.

  The Baron tried to persuade Scarface to head for Tariffa or Cadiz on Spain’s windy Atlantic side, where he had contacts who would get the gear on land. But Scarface was worried. What then? How would he get the gear through mainland Spain and France back to the Dam? He hadn’t planned for it.

  ‘I can’t be arsed messing about with sorting trucks overland,’ Scarface argued. ‘It’s time and money and we’ve got no security.’ He meant they didn’t have enforcers to ensure safe passage. The bars in southern Spain were crawling with modern-day pirates – most of them British – who’d love nothing more than to take his gear from him.

  ‘I’m going to crash the port and that’s that. I’m berthing her right outside my flat.’ The voyage had been a long three months, and Scarface was desperate for land. Desperate to spend a night with a woman. Desperate to start shifting the merchandise. Desperate to get back in the game. He knew the Colombians would immediately start itching for their money: they’d want to start getting it back to Bogotá before Christmas.

  One foggy September morning in 1989, the yacht found itself on choppy waters just outside the main terminal at Amsterdam port.

  ‘Head for that light,’ ordered Scarface. It was still dark and a lighthouse marked the opening in the harbour wall. The Baron brought the wheel around, on course straight into the main shipping line. The tiny vessel was dwarfed by container carriers 1,000 times its size.

  But in the confusion and poor light, suddenly they overshot the port entrance without realising. They ended up bobbing
alongside the harbour wall at the far side. It was almost as if the Baron hadn’t wanted to steer her in – as though he’d lost his bottle at the last minute. Not since their brush with the DEA in the Caribbean Sea had they been so vulnerable. Any passing Customs patrol boat would surely give them a pull now and inspect the boat. Giant CCTV cameras mounted on thick girders and housed in steel and glass weatherproof casings recorded the sea traffic for miles around. Scarface trained his binoculars on the control tower – surely the harbour master must have been wondering why the blip on the radar had failed to navigate the dangerous shipping lanes and sail into the quayside – a potential flag to the port politie. But surprisingly no one came. At one point they came within twenty metres of a gang of dockworkers and builders repairing a stretch of barrier on land. But instead of reporting them, the workers simply waved, their cigarettes glowing in the twilight.

  The Dutchman desperately tried to steer the yacht back out to sea. But they were trapped. Scarface was ratty, but he remained calm enough to gauge the situation. He ordered them to go with the flow, keeping tight to the harbour wall to keep their profile as low as possible.

  Astonishingly, they had a million-to-one stroke of good fortune. The wall seemed to go on forever, and at any moment they were expecting a Customs boat to roar up from the rear. But unexpectedly they came to a sharp break that they assumed was a corner but turned out to be the end of the wall. Astonishingly, they’d reached an opening: a small lock that had been left unsealed. Even the Baron was shocked. They manoeuvred the boat through it quickly, disappearing from view behind a bend, and amazingly they ended up on the still waters of an urban canal, heading into central Amsterdam.

  ‘How the fuck did that happen?’ exclaimed Scarface, as they floated past a bonded warehouse and then into an upmarket residential area. After several hours of finding their way through the spiderweb of canals, they berthed right outside the prearranged safehouse that had been rented by Scarface’s German partners. They’d made it home with a load potentially worth around £300 million at street value.