Druglord
Page 10
I met her through the family. The parents got together, had a chat and then we went out. I was a nutter. Got married. Got divorced a year or two later. I don’t even know the day I got married. I didn’t even wear a ring after the day of the marriage. It meant nothing to me. Swear to God. I didn’t know her age, or what day I got married.
I think I just suddenly woke up. Before I got married, I was going a million mile an hour. Then I ran out of petrol and married her. Filled the tank up again. Realised what I’d done. Sacked her. Back on the road again. That’s when John Haase came along and everything just went mad from then on.
8
THE WORLD IS YOURS – BRITAIN’S BIGGEST HEROIN GANG DO THE BUSINESS
In 1992 and 1993, Haase and the Turks were at their peak, smuggling in hundreds of kilos of heroin at regular intervals and making tens of millions of pounds in cash. A tight-lipped underworld source, who has witnessed some of the biggest dealers in the world rise and fall, took his hat off to the gang, giving them an uncharacteristic compliment: ‘Let’s just say, they were very industrious lads.’ The gang were so successful at flooding the market that they caused the biggest single drop in the price of heroin almost overnight – from £24–25,000 a kilo to £20,000 a kilo. For them, these were the good times.
Haase’s MO was simple: after receiving the uncut heroin from the Turks in kilo bags, Croker and Garrett would dilute the powder using paracetamol, usually increasing the volume by 25 per cent. Every kilo of high-percentage heroin produced 1.25 kilos of street heroin, immediately boosting profits by 25 per cent with little effort. The street heroin would then be divided into quarter-kilo bags – known as ‘corners’ on the street – and sold on to lower- and middle-ranking dealers across Merseyside and elsewhere.
Haase probably sold the quarter-kilo corner bags for a minimum of £6,000 each. Therefore, on a 100-kilo load (at £20,000 a kilo from the Turks, costing a total of £2 million), he could generate 125 kilos of diluted heroin, giving 500 corners selling for a gross of £3 million. A cool million-pound profit on one single load, which could be processed in less than a day and sold in probably two weeks. Half a million a week, if you’re lucky. Good work if you can get it.
If Haase was prepared to be more patient, known as ‘sitting on it’, and sell the kilos in even smaller amounts, then the profits simply went astronomical. Each corner can be divided into nine ounces. That can be diluted further to make 12 or 13 ounces. Each ounce can be sold for £800, making £10,400 on a quarter-kilo valued at £6,000. Or, to boost profits further, each ounce can be split into 28 grams at £50 a time. Each gram can be divided into ten 0.1-g bags at £10 each. All along the chain, further dilutions occur, generating even more multiples of profit.
Ken Darcy, a drug dealer from Liverpool who went on to join Haase’s gang, says the secret of Haase’s success can be found in four key competitive advantages: cheap heroin, a good credit system from the Turkish Connection, high-quality drugs that could be diluted easily to boost profits, and Haase’s ability to impose a sales monopoly through violence and flooding the market.
KEN DARCY: Haase and Bennett were getting heroin cheap enough and they were getting it laid on – up front and on credit – which gives them a massive edge on everyone else. Then they’d dance on it, bash it. Say you got four kilos, you can make it into five by bashing it, so you’ve just made an extra twenty grand instantly by bashing it. So, for every four you’re making twenty grand on an extra kilo, so if they are getting ninety ki or a hundred ki at a time, they are making a lot of dough without having to do very much. Then, suddenly, they’ve got that much of it, they’ve taken over the whole city by selling it. They are able to sell it a little bit cheaper than other dealers because they’ve made that extra twenty quid [£20,000] already by cutting it up. They are still making a good wage, even after undercutting the other suppliers.
All they want to do then is pay the debt back to these [the Turks] as quick as possible, so they get another parcel of heroin. Because that’s how it works. You’ve got to clear the slate before you get the next load. Sometimes the business goes up and down. One week you can be making brewsters and the next it’s dead slow and you’re not selling much gear. That’s with any drug. But they evened things out by forcing dealers to take their gear. ‘Either you buy it off me or you’re not selling it at all.’ It’s as simple as that.
Haase was beset by teething problems which nearly caused his heroin dream to crash before it had even got going properly. In 1992, he was arrested in connection with a gun that had been found by Merseyside Police – but miraculously he managed to escape serious charges and the mini-crisis blew over. The fact that he did not go to jail so soon after being released from the Transit Mob sentence raised suspicions amongst his underworld enemies that he had saved his skin by trading info with the police, that he had turned grass. But there is no evidence of this. Later, officers from the Metropolitan Police were astonished that their colleagues on Merseyside had not jailed Haase for the gun, an event that would have closed down the heroin operation immediately. Haase was obsessed with guns and carried one around because he was having a dispute with one of the city’s hard-hitters, Tommy Gilday, who later became an ally.
But in December 1992, just as they were getting into the swing of things, the gang suffered a major setback. They had just smuggled in a massive load of heroin from Turkey via France, but approximately 40 kilos of it and middle-ranking member Bulent Onay had been seized at his home in north London. The police had recovered 148 bags of heroin, each weighing about a quarter of a kilo, hidden in plastic bags in a bedroom wardrobe inside a green holdall. The total haul weighed 36.54 kilos and had a purity of 62 per cent. But there was a discrepancy. Onay remembered that he had placed 40 kilos at the bottom of his wardrobe. That meant approximately three and a half kilos had disappeared during the police raid. Bulent kept quiet but the officers eventually found out and a bent copper was later blamed for the alleged theft. Police estimated that at wholesale prices the load was worth £750,000 and at £100-per-gram street prices, £3.65 million. Onay was subsequently convicted and jailed.
The episode should have set off alarm bells amongst the remaining gang that they might be under surveillance, or that Onay might be talking to Customs to get himself a lighter sentence – especially considering the inside story of how the heroin ended up in Onay’s house. The parcel had taken a circuitous route exposing nearly every member of the gang. First it came into the UK from France. Then it went to Liverpool. Some time approaching Christmas 1992, distributor Eddie Croker was told by Paul Bennett to take 40 kilos from the stash and to rendezvous at 8 p.m. in Pirrie Road with the Turks. The heroin was in quarter-kilo sealed bags and Croker loaded 160 into the boot of his car. Haase and Bennett were watching close by as they were transferred into Onay’s Carlton, alongside Kaya. The 40 kilos ended up in Onay’s wardrobe on Christmas Eve.
But Haase and Kaya did not heed the warnings. They were making so much money and were so confident in their ability, and in keeping Onay from grassing through their fearsome reputation, that they carried on regardless. Suleyman Ergun was parachuted in to take Onay’s place, with increased powers to run a tighter ship. For his first day’s work collecting money from Liverpool, Kaya gave him £2,500. Foolishly he paid it into his bank account the next day – a mistake he would not repeat.
As business flourished and Haase began selling unprecedented amounts of heroin in double-quick time, senior Turkish Connection boss Ergun was rushed off his feet. He quickly became lost in a whirl of late-night cash pick-ups and heroin deliveries, driving constantly on the motorway between London and Liverpool and bombarded with mobile-phone calls and pager messages. The gang were selling so much heroin that he was exhausted. He sometimes came home with hundreds of thousands of pounds stuffed into black bin bags. He would tip the money out on his bed in his room at his mum and dad’s house and begin to count and box it. But he would simply collapse and fall asleep. There simply wasn’t enough ti
me in the day to get through it.
When there was a moment, he would raid his mum’s larder for boxes of cornflakes or teabags, tip out the contents and use the containers to package some of the cash so that it could be taken back to Turkey by a courier. Eventually, a system settled down. Shipments of 100 or 110 kilos of heroin would leave Turkey bound for the UK. Ten kilos, worth £200,000, would be shaved off to pay for this transport and the balance of 90 or 100 kilos would be directly given to John Haase in Liverpool or his couriers in Paris.
SULEYMAN ERGUN: The guy that introduced John Haase to Kaya was an ex-policeman from Cyprus called Mustafa Sezazi. He was in Long Lartin prison with John Haase when John was doing the 14 for armed robbery. Mustafa was doing 16–18 years for heroin smuggling. Mustafa spoke very highly of John and said that he was very well respected in Liverpool. He also said that he could sell a great deal of heroin and had contacts all over England. While Mustafa was in prison, we took care of him and his family and made sure they had money. I once went to a factory which made coats and jackets. Mustafa’s son was working there. I didn’t know him when I arrived, so enquired and the guy was pointed out to me. I walked up to him and gave him £2,000 in cash and said it was from Kaya. I remember seeing him on one more occasion outside a Pizza Hut on Stamford Hill. He got into my car and I gave him £10,000 to pay his dad’s solicitor’s fees for his appeal. Mustafa had good contacts in Pakistan and India, where he would buy the heroin and bring it to Turkey and then on to England. He would often buy raw opium and have it made into heroin in Turkey.
Kaya had gone up to see Haase, after he’s got out of prison in the early months of 1992, about them doing heroin business together. So that’s how it started off, and soon the contact Mustafa had given us began to pay off. Business between us and John Haase started to boom. There were a couple of hiccups early on, like everything else, but they were overcome. One of our people called Bulent Onay was arrested on 24 December 1992 with about 40 kilos of heroin, on his return from Liverpool.
We didn’t fear that Onay would talk too much because it was all based on honour and loyalty and respect. And we didn’t think that the whole organisation was under threat because we were convinced that he’d been set up in a one-off kind of thing. Business just carried on regardless.
Up until then, Bulent had been one of our main contacts, with Haase under the supervision of Kaya. I was ambitious. I was determined to be better than Bulent and take on more responsibility. I knew I was better at the job than him and I didn’t want to let Kaya down. Just days after Bulent was arrested, I was slotted into his boots and business was up and running before New Year. That’s how efficient we were. Up until then, I had been working with Kaya in connection with another gang who we supplied, but Kaya wanted me to deal with Liverpool because it was quickly becoming our biggest outlet. I then started getting involved with Haase more. My first visit to Liverpool was with two other male friends: Kaya and Joey the Turk. There we met John Haase. We also met Paul Bennett to collect money, and to introduce me to money pick-ups, people who would courier money and so on. It was also the opportunity to get to know both Haase and Bennett in case I had to run the operations when Kaya was not in England.
This first meet with Haase was at the end of 1992, just after Christmas. The story behind this meeting was this. Kaya had just brought in a big parcel of heroin – about 90 kilos – which had been given to Haase about two weeks before on about 18 December. Forty kis of this had been nicked with Onay, but that still left fifty to sell. It had come overland from Turkey to France then across the Channel. Haase and Bennett had got the ferry over to Calais to make sure that the last leg was OK, to see that it came into the UK without a problem. As soon as they had come back on the ferry to Dover, they met with Kaya and Joey the Turk in a Kentucky Fried Chicken shop in Islington to discuss them coming up to Liverpool to collect some money for the gear towards the end of December. That’s when I came in. I went to Liverpool with Kaya.
When we first met John Haase, the money wasn’t ready, so myself, Kaya and Joey went to a hotel in Manchester for the night. We stayed at the Britannia Hotel in Piccadilly. The next day, we drove back to Liverpool and met Haase and were paid. They then took us to a sauna in Rocky Lane and had a chat, the nature of which was more heroin and money talk. It was there that I met Chris No-Neck for the first time. He walked in the room with a black bin bag full of money. We shook hands; we were given £68,000.
John Haase had known Kaya for about 8–10 months by that time. I had been working with Kaya for a while collecting money for heroin from other people who we supplied. When I was brought in to deal with Haase, they owed us for 90 kilos of heroin which Kaya had supplied to them earlier. The sixty-eight grand was part payment on that. If you give someone ninety kilos and you charge them twenty grand a ki, then you’re owed 1.8 million, but the payments are spread over the time it takes the dealer to sell the gear, so there is not that much pressure on them. No one has that money knocking around in one go. Also, it’s easier to transport little bits of money piecemeal than all in one go. You come up here one week, you’ll collect sixty-eight grand. You come up here the following week, you’ll pick up a hundred grand. The amounts of money I began to pick up varied. It could have been forty grand one time. It’s done in dribs and drabs. But it was all ticked off a mental account that Kaya kept in his head. After that first meeting, everyone in the room was told by Kaya that I was in charge of the Turkish side when he was not in England. Everyone agreed and we then drove back to London.
A few weeks later, I got a call from Turkey that more heroin was being made and that John would be getting some of it. I made a call to John Haase’s sister and left a message for John to call me. John’s sister was the one who would take most of John’s calls and then pass them on to him. She wasn’t aware of what was going on. John would get back to me within the hour. When he called me, I told him that I would be driving to Liverpool to collect more money. We arranged a pick-up for the next day. I made my way to Liverpool and got there quite late. I drove straight to the Rocky Lane sauna and parked around the corner. I paged John from a phone box. He called me and said someone would be calling me back. I parked my car about 20 metres from the phone box. After around 20–30 minutes, someone made a call to me from the very same phone box. I could see the male in the box but I didn’t know it was the person I was supposed to meet. That was the first time I met Paul Lally. We shook hands, then he handed me a black bin bag. He said it contained £68,000. He got in his car and drove away. I put the bag on the front passenger seat and started to drive.
You had to be alert all the time, switched on, making sure that you weren’t being followed, making sure that you weren’t under surveillance by the Customs or police, or maybe other villains looking to have you off for the money. Though that was unlikely because of who we were, you could never get sloppy. I never let my guard down.
That day I noticed something strange. As I was turning left, I came to a dead end. Right opposite me there was a light blue Ford Sierra parked on the corner. There was one male at the steering wheel. After I saw him in my rear-view mirror, I pulled in to a petrol station to see whether he followed me. I put petrol in the car, got some fags and a drink. So I then put my bonnet up and made out I was checking the motor’s engine. As he was driving up to the traffic lights, I saw him looking at me. We were almost eye to eye. It could have been nothing but I made a mental note of it.
I knew Kaya was returning to England very soon, so I didn’t say anything to John Haase about it. When Kaya came back to England, I told him what had happened. Details like that were so important that we set up a meet, bearing in mind what had happened to Onay. The meet was in the Black Horse pub in Old Swan, Liverpool. There was the four of us: Kaya, John, Ben and me. I told them what had happened and asked whether anyone in their firm had a light blue Ford Sierra. John said no and changed the subject.
At that meet, me and Kaya picked up more money. Just before we left, John asked
me and Kaya whether we could get them any passports. We said, ‘Yes, but they are really expensive.’ But they were very good, right out of the Home Office. They were £4,000 each. They wanted one each, so Kaya said, ‘Have your photos ready for the next meet.’
We arranged another meet to collect more money. We sat down at the Black Horse again and started talking. They handed over money and some photos for the passports. The man who supplied the passports was Kaya’s man named Ozzie, a Turkish-Cypriot from south London. The passports took three to four weeks. When they were passed on to us, John’s passport was under the name of John Williams and Ben’s was Shaun Ryan. Again, I remember feeling uncomfortable about something I saw out the corner of my eye. Seated a few feet away from us were a man and a woman drinking orange juice. What struck me was the woman’s handbag. I cannot explain it but it just didn’t seem right. I told John, Kaya and Ben but they didn’t seem that bothered.
Business just carried on going from strength to strength. The sooner they’d finish selling one parcel, the sooner they’d get the next hustle. The quicker it sold, the quicker they’d get the next load. That was their motivation. They were quick. They were very, very fast – I’ll give them that. Because they were greedy, they couldn’t wait to sell one 90-kilo load so they could get their hands on the next. They’d cut it first. The quicker they paid us, the quicker they’d get the next parcel, the quicker they’d get the money. They paid good for about a year and a half. I wouldn’t say on time – dribs and drabs, but we got it. One of the reasons John Haase was able to sell a lot quickly was because he was a bit of a bully. He’d force it on dealers and say, ‘Look, you’re gonna buy off me.’ This person, they was getting it for 22 off someone else. Haase and Bennett then were making him buy it for 24 off them.