Gibraltar is now used as a junction for cocaine from the Colombian cartels by many of Britain’s most powerful criminals. The Spanish government reckons that Gibraltar’s superbusy drug barons are importing billions of pounds’ worth of cocaine each year right under the noses of this little piece of Britain on the armpit of the Mediterranean. Getting in and out of the Rock is so easy for many British criminals that they’ve helped turn Gibraltar into a virtually lawless society, where cash rules above all else.
One of the British villains who have popped in and out of the Rock in recent years is master criminal GH. While on the run from British police, GH spent many months on the Rock setting up cocaine deals while at the same time equipping his secret Spanish hideaway, seventy miles up the road, with household goods from the UK stores that dominate the Rock’s main shopping street.
GH boasted that he’d never been asked to even show the photograph page of his false British passport during his numerous trips in and out of Gibraltar. ‘I was told never to drive a car onto the Rock because that would be more likely to be stopped and searched, so I walked through the border checkpoint waving my UK passport without even having to show it,’ he told me.
GH also rates Gibraltar as one of the easiest places from which to fly back into Britain when he has deals to do and people to see back on his old manors of east London and Essex. But even more disturbingly, GH claims he has set up a number of multi-million-pound cocaine deals in partnership with one of the Rock’s most powerful criminals.
GH says he knew many years earlier from the days when he handled the takings from some of the UK’s most audacious robberies of the last century that he could launder money with ease on Gibraltar. But GH’s dodgy dealings on the Rock are only the tip of the iceberg. For some people believe Gibraltar is awash with more gangsters per square mile than Chicago in the thirties.
Further down the food chain are Gibraltarian characters like Thin Phil. His real first name is every bit as clichéd. He’s a typical member of the Gibraltar mafia. He works as a runner for a major former north London drug baron now based on the Rock. Thin Phil and other runners can make up to £5,000 a week steering their inflatables across the ocean. His boss has numerous boats, crews, lock-ups to store drugs and dozens of people to load and unload his narcotics on both sides of the Straits.
The biggest earner used to be the hash available fourteen miles due south in Morocco, less than an hour across this busy but under-policed stretch of water. But these days a flotilla of speedboats and inflatables smuggle an even more valuable commodity – cocaine. The biggest irony of all this is that while the British-run colony seems to be turning a blind eye to these multi-million-pound criminal enterprises, it is ‘the fuckin’ Spanish’ – as Thin Phil calls them – who are genuinely trying to crack down on Gibraltar’s criminal tendencies.
Spanish police now use a powerful launch – the smugglers call it a turbo – to pursue drug couriers in their inflatables. And, naturally, they insist that Gibraltar’s lawless reputation is yet more evidence that it should be permanently reunited with the Spanish mainland. In a community with only 30,000 inhabitants, nearly everyone on the Rock knows the men who work for the drugs barons. Their tinted-windowed cars thud rap music out of rattling speakers as they coast up and down the colony’s tacky main street stuck in second gear. Yet they remain relatively untouched by authorities.
The irony behind the influx of British villains onto Gibraltar is that many of them are drawn to the rock from their whitewashed villas on the Costa del Sol by the very Britishness of the place. Back in 2000 the then Spanish premier José María Aznar handed UK prime minister Tony Blair a file on alleged criminal activity on the Rock which claimed that criminals – including at least six UK gangs – on Gibraltar had begun turning their hand to murder and kidnappings connected to their lucrative criminal enterprises, primarily cocaine.
Down at the Rock’s Queensway Quay Marina, favourable mooring rates and luxurious amenities have encouraged many of the Costa del Sol’s flashier villains to keep their yachts tied up in Gibraltar when they are not out sailing the Med. Every now and again Gibraltar’s UK-supported government is reminded by the big chiefs in Whitehall that they should crack down on the drug barons.
Then orders are issued to seize a few of the smugglers’ favourite boats, the rigid inflatables. But, as happened a few years back, the owners of these craft (the drug barons never have legally proven ownership) usually erupt with indignation, tear into the Rock’s beleaguered police force and cause maximum mayhem.
The result? A discreet pause and then the boats are given back and business carries on as usual. The Rock’s authorities even introduced a law banning any further importation of rigid inflatables. Owners of such boats were ordered to show evidence they were used for bona fide purposes. ‘Now every inflatable owner has paperwork proving that he does boat trips for tourists,’ says one Gibraltar regular. ‘The law was a waste of time but at least it shut Whitehall up.’
But the most important reason why so many British criminals use Gibraltar as a base for their dodgy enterprises is because the Rock is awash with funny money. Of the £3.5 billion floating around Gibraltar (30,000 population, 35,000 registered companies), more than half of it is reckoned to be the proceeds of illicit business dealings, tax avoidance, smuggling and drug trafficking.
In other words, cocaine criminals are good news for Gibraltar. As Thin Phil says: ‘This place can’t survive without all the dodgy characters. We are the backbone of the place. If they get rid of us, they might as well hand it back to the Spanish.’
PART FOUR
THE UK’S COCAINE WARS
The UK has evolved into one of the most lucrative cocaine markets on the planet. Almost £10 billion worth of illegal drugs are sold in the country each year, and cocaine is the second most popular substance, after cannabis, with close to one million regular users. But in Britain, cocaine gets ‘stepped on’ probably more than anywhere else in the world and prices vary from £30 to £100 per gram.
Consider this: cocaine can be purchased wholesale from Colombian cartels for around £1,500 a kilo. The same drug, cut and sold in London will fetch more than £100,000 a kilo. As one cocaine baron told me: ‘It’s a fuckin’ gold rush, mate. There’s nothing like London when it comes to good, old-fashioned profit.’
Figures released by HM Revenue & Customs show that 3,120kg of cocaine was seized in the UK in 2012, an increase of more than 20 per cent over the previous four years. Yet at least 40,000kg of cocaine still manages to slip into the UK every year, despite supposedly this nation’s supposedly ‘airtight’ border controls.
But who are the characters behind this cocaine boom in the UK? And why has it thrived and become such an immensely popular narcotic among the general population?
CHAPTER 25
HJ
Even in superficially civilised countries like the UK, crooked law enforcement officials play a vital role as far as cocaine barons are concerned. I’ve been told many times that for the right price, police, judges, even politicians can be ‘bought’ in Britain to provide essential inside information and influence in the ‘right places’ so that coke barons can keep one step ahead of the authorities.
Some cynics claim this is just a case of boasting criminals having a dig at their old enemies by pretending they are all ‘bent’. But my research into this book shows that for the right price there are officials in the UK who can be bribed. Former police officer ‘HJ’ sums it all up perfectly. I can’t even say which force he served with or his rank because it would give away his identity. HJ received a prison sentence in the UK for providing ‘help’ to some of the most powerful cocaine gangsters in Britain.
Tracking down ‘bent coppers’ inside the deadly world of cocaine is even harder than meeting the gangsters themselves. Not surprisingly, most of these characters are extremely reluctant to break cover. HJ only agreed to meet me because I was known to a number of his associates, who vouched for me.
Our first meeting took place in a quiet pub near HJ’s home in the Essex countryside. HJ had endured many years in prison as a ‘bent copper’ – which surely would have made him the ultimate target for many inmates. Yet he insisted he did not have any problems while serving his sentence. Maybe some of the powerful cocaine barons who’d paid him for information in the first place made sure he was protected?
‘No. It was nothing to do with them that I was left alone in prison,’ said HJ. ‘I’m just not the sort of person to rub people up the wrong way. I served my time and kept a low profile throughout and people seemed to respect me for it. Of course it wasn’t easy but I survived it and actually in some ways I learned a lot when I was inside. Not enough police officers take the time to understand the “enemy”. If they did, then maybe a lot more criminals would have a better impression of the police.’
But it was HJ’s encounters with some of the UK’s most powerful cocaine barons that interested me the most. How did these criminals trace him in the first place? I asked.
‘Oh, it was all very predictable, really,’ answered HJ. ‘I was dealing with these sorts of criminals virtually the whole time as part of various long-standing investigations into drug gangsters. But the first time I got “tempted” was when I nicked a couple of guys who were part of a big coke gang and one of them mentioned that his boss needed some information.’
HJ continued: ‘That first time I just laughed it off because I’d heard about guys like this offering bribes to cops many times before but I never actually thought they’d be stupid enough to actually try it. I wasn’t in the slightest bit bothered. Looking back on it, I brushed it off without a moment’s thought.’
But, unknown to most of his colleagues at the time, HJ had himself developed a serious cocaine habit since busting another drugs gang some years earlier. He explained: ‘I’d gone undercover for a while and that involved having to snort coke in order to be accepted into a circle of criminals. Trouble is I liked the stuff too much! It made me feel confident and positive and, quite frankly, for a while I actually think it improved my skills as a detective!
‘But cocaine addiction creeps up on you when you are least expecting it. You can easily go home at night, stop taking it until you’re next out with the lads. But the trouble is that once you start taking it outside party hours, it develops into something you really rely on in order to get through the day at work. And that’s what happened to me. I’d become a serious cokehead and it was impacting on every aspect of my life but back then I don’t think I realised it. I was in complete denial about the damage I was doing to myself.
‘I’d even found a coke dealer to buy my stuff from. He didn’t realise I was a copper. He was a decent bloke in many ways. Just doing a job like the rest of us, I guess. But I was starting to need more and more of it every day and soon it was costing me hundreds of pounds every week to maintain the habit. That’s when I got “vulnerable”, as they call it in the Force.’
The other not insignificant problem was that HJ’s modest police salary didn’t pay enough to cover his cocaine habit, as well as supporting his wife and two young children. ‘It was causing no end of problems at home. I hadn’t told my wife I was hooked on coke. She thought I was having an affair with someone at work and the atmosphere at home was awful. Our two little children obviously had no idea what was going on, but I was either high as a kite or in a bad temper from coke-comedown, so I wasn’t exactly being a loving father, either.’
Desperate to feed his coke habit and equally desperate to feed his wife and family, HJ contacted a criminal who’d once offered him ‘good money’ if he could help him with ‘a few favours’ after meeting him during a police raid on the gangster’s home in the Home Counties.
HJ recalled: ‘This guy was a big player in the cocaine trade and he liked to keep one step ahead of his friends and enemies. I knew what I was getting myself into but I was desperate to keep my family together. I felt I had no choice, even though it was all my fault in the first place.’
A meeting in the car park of a motorway service station followed. ‘This character had an appalling record for violence, including an attack on a policeman, but I was so deep in the hole by this time that I didn’t really care. I just wanted money and I would do pretty much anything to get it.’
Within weeks, HJ had been ‘pulled in hook, line and sinker’ by his new criminal paymaster. He explained: ‘It seemed like easy money at first. I’d trace a few car registrations then swap that info for an envelope with £500 in it. I actually convinced myself it wasn’t harming anyone particularly. What an idiot I was.’
But gradually those ‘favours’ began to stack up and the information required became more and more sensitive. ‘One time he wanted to know the details of a statement given against him by another criminal. I must have been mad to help him with that because it was obvious he would “sort out” the guy, who’d given evidence against him. I was effectively endangering this guy’s life just for a few bob. I look back on what I did with disgust at myself. How could I have been so ruthless and coldhearted? I’m shocked by it even now. But I suppose it was the cocaine addiction driving me on all the time. I liked to have at least a gram on me at all times. It made me feel I was in control. How twisted up is that?’
The same ‘Mister Big’ was also rumoured to have used firearms to ‘sort out’ his enemies. ‘He was charming to me but I could see the killer in his eyes every time we met. But I ignored it and put on a chummy voice just to keep him happy. Looking back on it, he was probably the coldest person I’ve ever met and I knew my own life would be in danger if I ever crossed him.’
But the same ‘Mister Big’ was so impressed with HJ’s information that he began proudly recommending HJ’s ‘services’ to other powerful criminal faces in the south-east of England. ‘That’s when the money really started flooding in,’ said HJ.
‘A whole load of other gangsters started wanting me to get them info and they began paying me in thousands instead of hundreds for much more sensitive, inside stuff. I started blowing even more on coke, which made me more and more greedy for the money. I was turning into a physical wreck, hardly able to operate on a day-to-day basis. I was only sleeping a couple of hours each night because I was so high on cocaine. I was a complete mess.’
HJ believes the cocaine he was snorting was effectively helping him ‘totally ignore’ the consequences of his actions. ‘I went into a state of cocaine-induced denial, I guess. I tried my hardest not to think about how the info was being used. It was pathetic really. I should have called a halt there and then but I needed the cash, which gave me the freedom to take as much coke as I wanted and provide for my family. For a while, it seemed like the perfect combination. But I knew it couldn’t go on for ever.’
HJ claims that at one stage being known in the criminal fraternity as a ‘bent copper’ helped him infiltrate some of the most powerful cocaine gangs. ‘I was a copper they could actually trust. They knew they had something over me so I wasn’t likely to get them nicked, which was completely true. At one stage I had the ear of some of the most notorious gangsters in the Home Counties. Sometimes they even provided me with small tips about rival criminals whenever they wanted people removed from the drugs business. I actually had a higher arrest record than virtually all my colleagues at the time.’
For the following two years, HJ provided more and more inside information to cocaine gangs. He explained: ‘And like any drug addict, I didn’t know how to stop. I should have recognised that the things I was being asked to do would eventually lead to m
e but I just stumbled along. I was checking bank accounts, phone records, police reports on known criminals. I accessed witness statements in big drug cases. It was crazy, irresponsible and highly dangerous. Many innocent people could have been harmed by this information leaking into the wrong hands.’
Then one of the UK’s biggest cocaine criminals began using HJ’s ‘services’. He explained: ‘I got a big payment of many thousands of pounds from this one gangster to find out some info about one of his rivals in the coke game. That information indirectly led to a shooting incident. No one was actually killed but the incident sparked a very thorough police investigation and that’s when my activities were finally flagged up.’
HJ recalled: ‘Looking back at it, I probably would have died of cocaine poisoning if that hadn’t have happened. I was taking four, sometimes even five grams of coke a day and trying to juggle my work as a detective with a young family, all of whom were sick of me coming home late at night drunk and coked out of my mind. In many ways, I was incredibly relieved when two officers came knocking on my door and said they knew what I’d been up to. I’d had enough of hiding everything from the people I love and from my colleagues. I needed help but up until that point I had been too scared to ask.’
Perhaps surprisingly, HJ claims that few of his colleagues criticised him after his double dealing corruption was exposed. ‘Sure, they were shocked. Look, I’d been a good copper with an excellent record even in the middle of taking bribes to provide criminals with info. Some officers I didn’t know personally refused to even give me the time of day. But instead of slagging me off, my closest colleagues genuinely tried to help me sort out the mess I was in and I will always be grateful to them for that. They seemed to recognise what my cocaine addiction had done to me.’
HJ was immediately booked into a clinic to get him off cocaine and alcohol while detectives mounted an in-depth investigation into his criminal activities and connections to some of the country’s most powerful cocaine trafficking gangs. ‘When they unravelled what I’d been up to, even I was surprised. Just like my coke addiction, I had let it creep up on me. I just hadn’t realised how many times I’d been bribed.’
Cocaine Confidential Page 15