Haase made do with Kaya’s contact Salim – but he was relatively small-time and could only supply limited loads. Haase was determined to get back to the days of 100-kilo parcels on demand. In desperation, Haase and his female deputy, The Supervisor, went to see Suleyman Ergun in jail to beg for a contact. The unforgiving but unfailingly polite Ergun declined. Later, Ergun managed to get hold of the legal documents proving Haase’s betrayal. He sent them to Kaya’s brother Timi in Istanbul with instructions to make sure that Kaya got to see them, with the ominous message to keep Haase close in the meantime. The Vulcan would deal with Haase in his own time.
Meanwhile, Haase was rebuilding other parts of his crime empire at breakneck speed, while the authorities looked on helplessly. Haase’s inevitable return to crime made a laughing stock of the home secretary and the Customs officers who had lobbied for his release, wrongly believing that the duo’s prison experience would have taught them a lesson.
For Customs and Excise, Haase was too much of a hot potato to take on. He was a ready-made tabloid crime story. His every move seemed to make the papers and humiliate the government. The situation was further complicated by the fact that Haase was technically still a registered informant. Since January 1994, when he had first turned ‘supergrass’ on remand and begun feeding Customs information on the whereabouts of guns and drugs, Haase was a fully fledged, signed-up official snout.
That meant Haase could use the fact that he was still ‘on the books’ as a defence at any time to explain away his criminal activity. It wouldn’t be the first time a supergrass had turned around and said, ‘I was only committing crimes so that I could gather intelligence and turn it over to the authorities.’
The tricky relationship between Haase and Customs and Excise was exacerbated further because Paul Cook continued to meet Haase and Bennett after their release. This was not to warn Haase to desist from gangsterism or to probe him for criminal intelligence, as would be expected of an informant. Cook met Haase and Bennett in order to discuss how they could limit the damage being done to the authorities by adverse publicity, to keep them away from reporters and to return property. Even so, Haase and Bennett were prepared to grass on rival drug dealers. Via their solicitor Tony Nelson, they told Cook about huge shipments of drugs, dates and even names of dealers. But for some reason, Cook did not act on the info and was later criticised in court. These meetings were detailed in a witness statement later given by Cook. Cook revealed:
My dealings with John Haase and Paul Bennett since that time [of their release] are as follows:
1. In 1996, I attended the release of Paul Bennett with Mr [Tony] Nelson his solicitor and then returned to my office.
2. In late 1996, as part of my duty of care after media articles appeared in various newspapers, I attended Manchester airport, where I met Paul Bennett and his family arriving back into the UK from a family holiday in Mexico. I arranged an overt search of their baggage by uniformed Customs officers, after which I took Paul Bennett to a hotel near the airport to meet Mr Nelson and John Haase. The reason for my actions was to allow their legal representatives to discuss matters with them in advance of the press.
3. I subsequently attended the office of Mr Nelson. I believe this was around December 1997, when Mr Nelson, John Haase and Paul Bennett were present. The reason for this was to return property. A general discussion took place regarding how they were contending with any difficulties. At that time, general information relating to other individuals was volunteered by Paul Bennett.
[The National Investigation Service contact sheet timed 1658 hours relating to this meeting reveals that Bennett informed on seven gangsters involved in heroin, cocaine and Ecstasy deals including two heroin dealers from Manchester, an Asian smuggler from Birmingham who uses the ancient system of Hawala banking to wash money, a South African cannabis smuggler and two of Liverpool’s top heroin importers.]
4. I have since received a number of calls, that have diminished in time, from Mr Nelson, during which he gave general details of individuals who were concerned in drugs. I have no record of the dates of these calls.
5. At some time in 1998, I received a call from Mr Nelson and then John Haase concerning a threat against an individual. I passed these details to a member of the Merseyside Force Intelligence Bureau.
[During this conversation, recorded on a contact sheet, Nelson revealed details of some Granby Street-based gangsters, another dealer doing ‘loads of brown’, a 50–80-kilo cocaine importation before Christmas ’98 and that one of his clients had been offered a sample. He also promised ‘something good’ in a couple of weeks.]
6. On 3 August 1998, I received a letter from my Assistant Chief Investigations Officer.
7. On 11 June 1999, I telephoned Mr Nelson to inform him that Paul Bennett was wanted in connection with a cannabis importation. I asked Mr Nelson that, if possible, he contact Paul Bennett and arrange for him to surrender for interview. I received no news after this request.
In 1998, Cook was instructed by his boss to cut all links. A bombshell memo from Customs boss Steve Rowton to Cook, dated 3 August 1998 and referred to in Point 6 of Cook’s statement above, read:
Restricted – Management
John Haase and Paul Bennett
We spoke. As you know, there is sustained political interest in the activities of Haase and Bennett. In order to safeguard our position, we must maintain our distance. You are therefore directed to have no further dealings with Haase, Bennett or their representatives. If they should contact you, for whatever reason, you must report the matter immediately to either me or HODO [head of drugs operations].
The memo seemed to sum up the helplessness of the situation. Customs and Excise had their hands tied as Haase ran amok. It seemed as though Haase had them exactly where he wanted them – dancing to his tune.
Haase’s security company employed about 100 guards and was a great front company. One branch of the company hired bouncers out to nightspots in Liverpool. The other supplied watchmen for factories and building sites. The business made a profit but more importantly was a ready source of strong-arms for Haase’s criminal activities.
In traditional gangster fashion, Haase maintained to his public that he was going straight despite the crippling stigma attached to his past. In an interview with the Liverpool Echo, Haase lied, ‘I am going straight, running an efficient business and doing it well. I am a poacher turned gamekeeper. Half my life has been spent locked away behind bars. I feel as though I have wasted so many years.’
Haase said that his woman, Debbie Dillon, kept him on the straight and narrow:
I met Debbie [Dillon] in a pub in the city and it was love at first sight. Suddenly I had a girlfriend who I wanted to be with more than anything in the world. It was a big, big gamble for Debbie deciding whether to stay with me. We spoke and she discussed things with her parents. I promised her that I would go straight and that things had changed. And her parents’ view was that if she loved me, she should give it a go. Thank God. I am happier than I have ever been in my life. I get on great with my in-laws and have reconciled with my mam and dad.
In the mould of the Krays, Haase promoted himself as the kind of guy who helped old ladies to cross the road and gave money to charity.
I sponsor a Sunday football team, Pineapple FC in Dingle, and I enjoy watching them. I keep fit and enjoy skiing. When I got out, I was discussing what to do with my mate John Melvin. We thought about renovating houses. But John suggested that I should go into the security business. After all, I know a lot about security, having been a criminal for so long.
He added, ‘I am endeavouring to provide an expert service to my clients and have not received any complaint from either client or a member of the public,’ knowing full well that disgruntled clients often withdrew their complaints after being beaten up or having their houses firebombed.
The climax of Haase’s PR coup was a preposterous untruth: ‘Life is so different for me now and I just hope that the pu
blic will give me the chance to show that I have changed.’
Behind the scenes, Haase continued his orgy of terror and round-the-clock crime. There was so much graft there were not enough hours in the day to fit it all in. But it was well hidden, and Big Brother Security won a string of legit contracts. Astonishingly, Haase’s company took over the security at a parish church. The story made national newspaper headlines. An anonymous member of St Mary’s Walton-on-the-Hill church in Walton, Liverpool, who was too scared to be named, told the Sunday Mirror: ‘It’s crazy! How can you have a man like this looking after a church? It’s like having the Devil to stand at the gates at St Peter.’
Haase’s suitablity to run a security company guarding prime sites such as McDonald’s at Liverpool FC’s Anfield Stadium raised questions in the press and the profession. Some industry bosses called for him to be banned from trading.
Furthermore, police and Customs and Excise were at a loss to figure out how they could bring Haase down. They couldn’t get close to him. Evidence to put him away again was almost impossible to find. Putting Haase’s ‘political protection’ aside, there were very definite technical and logistical problems associated with mounting an operation against him.
Haase’s organisation could not be penetrated by outsiders. His inner circle were fiercely loyal and as a supergrass Haase knew the threat posed by informants. Haase was an expert in counter-surveillance, with access to anti-bugging devices, secret video cameras, expert trackers, surveillance vans, long-lens cameras and scrambled walkie-talkies. Private detectives could supply him with a wealth of data, including phone bills, medical records, bank details, ex-directory phone numbers and addresses of rival criminals. Corrupt policemen, lawyers and prison officers also tipped him off about operations against him. Bodyguards protected his every move. Even his wedding looked like a presidential cavalcade, with one onlooker saying, ‘There seemed to be a lot of bouncers on the door, checking everyone who went into the wedding. Security seemed very strict.’
In short, the outlook for those looking to bring Haase down was bleak. Haase was emerging victorious and there seemed to be nothing or no one who could stop him.
In 1997, however, Customs began to fight back. Officers began to put together an intelligence file on Haase and figure out what he was up to. By the following year, the preparation was complete. In 1998, a full-scale investigation was launched. A unit separate from Paul Cook’s, codenamed Operation Octagon, was tasked to carry out the probe. It was initially focused on a nine-handed gang of cannabis smugglers based in Spain, London and Liverpool. Haase’s partner Paul Bennett had shown up on the radar as the central figure in the gang ‘who everyone bounced off ’ – in other words, the boss. Haase was only a junior partner in Bennett’s cannabis-smuggling ring – he only had £10,000 invested. But as Bennett was still partners with Haase, Octagon’s trail soon led them to the dock HQ, where they realised Haase was doing a lot of graft. Under Operation Octagon, Customs were able to get permission to make Haase their number-one target and to start planting bugs at his office. They would take their chances on the political fallout.
But Customs also had an ace up their sleeve – Haase’s old pal and pre-heroin business partner had turned supergrass against the drug dealers. Paul Grimes was willing to betray Haase in order to avenge the death of his son from a heroin overdose. He got a job as Haase’s right-hand man in Big Brother Security. Grimes would have to face extreme danger every day and the threat of exposure would be constant. If he was caught informing, his punishment would certainly be torture and possibly death.
The first phase of the operation would be the hardest: getting Paul infiltrated into the gang. He had not seen Haase for ten years and Haase may have discovered during that time through his underworld sources that his old pal Grimesy had informed on Warren. It was very high-risk. Against all odds, though, Grimes pulled it off and got a job as a lowly security guard with Big Brother just after Christmas 1998. Then he rose through the ranks to become Haase’s deputy – his security manager – about six months later.
The investigation was called Operation Monet – a massive joint venture between Customs and Excise’s National Investigation Service based in Manchester, Merseyside Police’s Major Crime Unit and the National Crime Intelligence Service (NCIS). Paul’s handler was a Customs intelligence officer called John King, assigned to NCIS.
Haase was so switched on that early on in the operation, in July 1998, he got suspicious, no doubt tipped off by one of his bent law-enforcement people. Incredibly, not suspecting Grimes at all, he told him that there was a ‘good team watching him and that they had bugged his home phone, office phone and mobile’. He warned Grimes not to talk on the phone. A Customs officer was later grilled in court about an alleged tip-off to Haase’s lawyer, but it was never proved. In April 1999, Haase was allegedly tipped off again, this time by an alleged bent copper at the force’s Canning Place station, that his office was, or was about to be, bugged.
The tip-off was bang on – a month later, in May 1999, bugs were inserted with the help of Paul Grimes at Haase’s Atlantic House HQ. The whole operation came close to being discovered after the building’s state-of-the-art alarm was disturbed during their insertion by a covert Customs team. Only a lot of fancy footwork on behalf of Paul Grimes put Haase’s men at ease. Monitoring and recording began on 17 May 1999. A few days later, on 25 May 1999, Customs officers trained a secret video camera on the door to Atlantic House.
PAUL GRIMES: When I got the job with Haase, he just mentioned he was doing the ciggies and was doing £1 million-plus deals. He said he was making as much from them as the drugs. Personality-wise, he’d turned into a tyrant. He’d done so much time, he’d gone crazy. Did not give a shit about authority or anyone. He’d hit the self-destruct button.
One day, I walked in the office about half-eight in the morning. Haase was sitting at his desk cleaning two guns. One was an old Army gun, the other was an automatic. I just looked at him and he started laughing. About half an hour later, he asked me to watch while he hid the guns wrapped in a taped plastic bag under the floorboards in an office upstairs. He was wearing gloves. That’s when I found out he was gun-running.
He was also doing a lot of contract violence. There was a hard-core of boys whose job was to fill people in, kidnap them, tie-ups, whatever. One day, we went to this fella’s house; I think he owed Haase money. One of Haase’s henchmen broke his jaw straight-off, no back answers, with one dig. Then they smashed up a solicitor’s office who owed someone money. This solicitor was well connected to the busies and the judges. He wasn’t a fucking gangster, he was a civilian and a fucking brief to boot. But John didn’t care. These were the new rules. ‘I’m John Haase – I’m invincible’ was his attitude. I watched him torture a guy from Blackpool for losing him a lot of money on a cigarette deal. This guy had been abducted from his cottage in Lytham St Annes and given a hiding.
Haase asked me to make an acid bath from hydrofloric acid in the cellar to torture two very big gangsters called The Iceman and The Security Boss. Haase was going to torture them so that they would lay off Bennett. Bennett owed them money from a drug deal. [Ironically, just a few years before, The Iceman and The Security Boss had helped with the Royal Pardons by supplying gun plants for Haase and Bennett.]
Behind my back, Haase recruited my son Heath as a security guard, but really as an arsonist in the protection rackets. He was in his mid-twenties but he’d done five years for robbery in 1994. I was fucking furious when I found out and told Heath to get out, but he wouldn’t listen. I took Heath aside and warned him to stay well clear of Haase, but he just smiled. It was as though he revelled in rebelling against me. Haase was paying him top dough to buy his loyalty.
It was just villainy all the fucking time. Kenny Doorteam ran the door side of the operation. He was a hard-hitter himself but he needed Haase as backing so he could muscle in on the doors all over town. If Kenny couldn’t get a door, then Haase used to cause trouble f
or the people who owned the door until he got it. Haase didn’t let up until he got it. That meant stabbings, shootings and firebombs. If clients weren’t persuaded, then their businesses simply went up in flames. End of story. Heath was the top arsonist; he became a specialist at it. Heath was getting in too deep. Had a word with him: ‘It’s fuckin’ serious, this fire palaver. Someone will get killed.’
But he was too big for his boots now. Fucked me off, he did. Haase paid Heath £2,000 to burn down the Sporting Club because the fella who owned it owed Bennett money. Heath set another club in town on fire and smashed up another – to force the owners to hand over the door. They did.
Then Kenny wanted to go after the big hotels and clubs. There was this one called the Devonshire Hotel where the door was run by an old pal of Haase’s who was old-school. But Haase didn’t give a fuck about any friendships. First the club got smashed up and then Haase sent Heath down to petrol bomb it of a night. Heath smashed up the hotel. Then he done all the cars in so that we ended up with the screw on the car park. Every single car in the car park – about 50, including rows of BMs, Mercs, everything – owned by the guests who were staying at the hotel was smashed up. Sledgehammers, baseball bats, the works. The next morning, it looked like a riot scene. Eventually, after a campaign of hassle, we got the full contract for the Devonshire.
After that, Heath had to carry on doing little bits of damage to the hotel and cars so that it didn’t look too suss, so that it looked as though we had nothing to do with it in the first place and that we were gradually reducing the damage now. It was textbook protection-racketeering and it worked like a dream. The money rolled in, but Haase wanted more. He was a 24-hour-a-day gangster. He couldn’t sleep. He used to phone me up at three and four o’clock in the morning to ask me about jobs.
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