With regard to the second indictment, again I feel that Leading Counsel [Lord Carlile] once more has excelled, in that the laundering is limited to £3,500 and again the case law would show a sentence of between eighteen months and three years for that level of laundering, and again credit will be given and a one-third reduction after a plea.
To summarise, Haase was being offered four to five years for the guns and approximately eighteen months for the money laundering: a total of about six years. With time off for good behaviour, that could mean four years, and taking into account the time spent on remand, Haase reasoned he could be out in 2003.
He was 51 years old at the time. It meant he would be out by the time he was 54, which was a result by any measure. Haase agreed to the deal and pleaded guilty before the trial got under way. It looked like another extraordinary coup for Haase.
Of course, there were also hiccups. At a critical point in the negotiations, Lord Carlile suddenly resigned from Haase’s case after Haase threatened to call Michael Howard as a witness. Outraged Carlile wrote a letter to Haase stating that his demands were contrary to his professional codes and risked dragging the legal profession into disrepute. He had seemingly baulked at the contemptuous, hard-line approach to the legal system displayed by Haase in his threats to involve Howard. After a brief hiatus, though, the problem was smoothed over and Lord Carlile came back on board.
Certain terms and conditions were attached to the plea bargain. Members of Haase’s gang later claimed that a secret clause was inserted into the bargain prohibiting Haase from talking publicly about this deal or the one he had made during his previous, 18-year sentence. The prosecution, Haase’s men claimed, were particularly keen to get him to promise never to go public about Michael Howard’s role in the affair. With the six-year deal apparently done and dusted, Haase had to sit back and await sentencing while his co-defendants were tried.
First up, in January 2001, was Barry Oliver, the security guard who had allegedly been at the Heritage Market dock offices on the day the guns were handed over. His co-defendants Heath Grimes and Walter Kirkwood, like John Haase, had entered guilty pleas. The court heard how Customs monitored the deal using electronic surveillance. David Steer, QC, prosecuting said:
The officers obtained authorisation to insert a secret audio transmitter inside the office. They also started to monitor recordings made by a video camera that was trained on the front door of the offices to record all comings and goings. The observations led to Kirkwood being tracked by armed police officers as he drove his gold Laguna along the East Lancashire Road on 7 September 1999. When it stopped at traffic lights at the junction of Moorgate Road, Kirkby, the police swooped and Kirkwood was arrested.
Mr Steer said that Haase, Oliver and Grimes were not arrested at that time and observations continued until 25 October 1999, when Haase was arrested at Lime Street station after stepping off a train from London. Two days later, police searched the market office building at Stanley Dock belonging to Big Brother Security. The search of Haase’s office and the surrounding warehouse space lasted eight days.
Liverpool Crown Court heard at another hearing how Customs officers had placed Haase high on their list of targets soon after his surprise release from jail in 1996. Senior Customs officer Steve Rowton revealed how his unit had acquired an informant within Haase’s organisation from early on. Paul Grimes was clearly the informant in question, but for security reasons the statement did not name him. Rowton told the court:
Between June 1997 and June 2000, I was assistant chief investigator for the National Investigation Service of HM Customs and Excise in the north-west. I was told we had someone very close to Haase. He gave us access to Haase’s office premises so that we could carry out the technical work that needed to be done.
On 21 February 2001, John Haase was sentenced. The court was closed to the public; armed cops guarded the door. The official reason given was to protect the officials and the accused. But there had been rumours that Haase’s gangster pals were planning to spring him from custody. Incredibly, the rumours were true.
THE DEBT COLLECTOR: There was a very big gangster in Scotland called Harry. He’s in jail now. But he’s very hard and very well respected and no one fucks with him. I think that was the gangster John was selling all the guns to. He thought a lot of John and he sent a vanload of Jocks down to Liverpool to spring him from the court. He was very loyal. They were sat off round the corner in a van. They were armed to the teeth. They were drinking whisky. They were bad lads. The plan was simple. They were going to shoot all the busies and get John. You wouldn’t fucking believe it. But that is how hard-core the Jocks are. They simply do not give a fuck. Anyway, just before they were about to come out shooting, Haase’s bird Debbie Dillon got wind of the plot. She went mad because she was convinced Haase had a good chance of getting off. She was running down the fucking street outside court begging the crazed Jocks not to do it, telling them that Haase had a deal, he was gonna get out anyway, that the last thing he needed was a fucking shoot-out. In the end, she found Kenny Doorteam. She was hysterical. She said to him, ‘Kenny, please have a word with them. They are going to shoot all the busies for John.’ Kenny, who was always the voice of reason, persuaded them to stand down.
Meanwhile, in court, Haase was completely unaware of the commotion. He even looked relaxed. He had an air of confidence about him, born from the certainty that he was getting six years. His contempt for the legal system was plain to see in his smug expression, knowing that everything had been settled in a quiet out-of-court arrangement.
Instead he was jailed for 13 years. Within seconds, the smile had been wiped off his face, quickly replaced by devastation. He was dumbstruck. He had been well and truly turned over. When he recovered his composure, Haase angrily shouted from the dock, ‘I didn’t plead guilty for this.’ But he was quickly sent down. The sentence consisted of seven years for selling the guns and six years for money laundering. Paul Ferris, the Glasgow godfather, reveals the full drama of Haase’s shock.
PAUL FERRIS: The courtroom was silent as the official read out the charges. Now it was the last one’s turn.
‘John Haase,’ read the official, ‘you are hereby charged with . . . ’
‘WHO ARE YOU TALKING TO, YE OLD CUNT?’ Haase was on his feet, leaning over the rail, spitting venom. ‘YOU CAN’T CHARGE ME. THIS FUCKING COURT CAN’T TRY ME.’ His face was scarlet, his fists pumping the air.
‘Order! Order!’ The crashing whacks of the judge’s gavel were drowned out by Haase’s furious bellows. ‘Take that man down . . .’
Two security guards jumped into action. The first was shoved easily aside, the other held on weakly to one arm, praying for reinforcements and soon.
‘NO FUCKING COURT CAN TRY ME, YE PRICKS,’ roared Haase. ‘ONLY THE FUCKING GOVERNMENT CAN TRY ME. GET ME THE FUCKING HOME SECRETARY IN HERE NOW. HE’LL TELL YE – HE’S THE ONLY ONE . . .’
In sentencing him, the judge made reference to the infamous 1996 decision. Judge Holloway said, ‘Mr [Michael] Howard is not given to bouts of light-headedness or light-handedness. One is entitled to assume that the Home Office investigated the details before agreeing to accept the Royal Pardon.’
Superintendent Dave Smith of Merseyside Police said, ‘We realised Haase was starting up his operations and was beginning to be a threat to society again.’
Mixed fortunes awaited Haase’s co-defendants. Heath Grimes, then twenty-six, received four years and Walter Kirkwood, then forty-six, received three years. Barry Oliver snatched the only result – he walked after the jury returned with a not guilty. His defence had successfully argued that he had been involved in the gun deal under duress from Bennett. Oliver put further pressure on the prosecution, asking awkward questions and demanding that Howard be formally questioned. He also threatened to name the gun-running Bennett as an informant in Operation Octagon. Oliver was convinced that Bennett was going to plant the guns in a phoney cache to offer up to the authorities to
get off the Operation Octagon cannabis charges. He was saying that it was a rerun of the bogus caches used by Haase and Bennett to con Michael Howard in 1996. It was a nightmare scenario for the authorities and was a lesson on how the supergrass system was a bag of snakes. Haase had tried to force Oliver to go guilty, boasting that he could do a deal – but Oliver stood his ground.
Oliver said, ‘It was during these conversations in his office that I began to realise that Haase and Bennett were setting me up. I also wondered why Bennett needed me at all for the task. I suspected and was told that he was seeking a deal and he needed the weaponry to effectively hand over to the authorities. I knew because he had told me that Nelson had brokered the previous deal. He was very close with Eliot. I spoke with Haase about this. Haase said the authorities would not buy it this time and they would need bodies. I then realised I was such a body, a scapegoat.’
Bennett indicated to Oliver that the guns were destined for HM Customs. Oliver revealed that Bennett boasted of his powerful connections inside the police and Customs and Excise, and said that Ben often phoned Paul Cook, whom he referred to as his guardian angel. Oliver claimed that Ben had met several police officers through Nelson’s football team. Ben continued to boast of his relationship with Simon Bakerman. On one occasion, at a boxing dinner, Bennett and Haase were present at the same time as bent copper Elmore Davies.
Haase immediately vowed to appeal. His PR campaign kicked in at once. In a letter to the Echo from Strangeways prison, Haase cried, ‘I am devastated. I feel like my life is over.’ But the stunt backfired when the headline ‘Whinger’ was splashed across first editions. After pressure from Haase’s camp, the critical tone of the piece was toned down for later editions.
From behind bars, Haase protested that he had been turned over. He argued that the deal he had agreed to, the six-year sentence, had been a false promise all along. He said that it had deliberately been made to lure him into entering an early guilty plea and stop him from going to trial. Haase said that the conspiracy had been plotted after he threatened to reveal the secrets behind the deal which had freed him from prison in 1996. After he threatened to call former Tory home secretary Michael Howard as a witness, he alleged, the deal was mysteriously put on the table. Haase believed the authorities would have been seriously embarrassed by a trial.
To back up his conspiracy theory, Haase revealed a timetable of events in the run-up to the deal, recorded in the diary of an associate.
Monday, 4 December 2000
Offered deal of ten to twelve years. Refused.
Tuesday, 5 December 2000
Haase tells his counsel Lord Carlile that he intends to call Michael Howard as a witness.
Wednesday, 6 December 2000
Crisis meeting arranged between Haase and Nelson and
Ackerley (junior counsel) in Strangeways prison.
Nelson sends letter to Carlile about six-year deal.
Lord Carlile resigns.
Thursday, 7 December 2000
Haase in pre-trial hearing.
Friday, 8 December 2000
Haase offered new six-year deal. Accepts. Carlile takes up case again.
But no one was listening. In the Commons, Liverpool Walton MP Peter Kilfoyle called for an immediate inquiry into how Haase was released from the 18-year sentence in the first place and accused the Home Office of naivety in their assessments of Haase. Kilfoyle said, ‘I just ask you to consider whether more damage was done by allowing Haase and Bennett back out onto the streets, or what could usefully be achieved by pretending that you could handle people like these.’
The trial of Kenneth Darcy took place two months later, on 17 April. Darcy, then forty-two, was sentenced to six years in jail after pleading guilty to possession with intent to supply. David Hislop, defending, claimed Darcy believed he was simply there to watch Haase, as he knew the man ‘had enemies’.
Epilogue
CAMPAIGNS FOR JUSTICE
It seems from my research for this book that John Haase regarded his 13-year sentence for gun-running and money laundering in 2001 as payback from the authorities for his last jail term being dramatically cut short by his Royal Pardon. To him, he was now the victim of a conspiracy, being punished by the authorities for not playing the game and keeping his head down after he got out in 1996. The way he saw it, dark forces had conspired to put him away, to prevent him from blowing the lid on a spine-chilling, JFK-style corruption scandal.
Unfortunately, for many of his victims, the blame-everyone-else lag logic didn’t add up. Many of them still believed that justice had not yet been done, that there was a still-unpaid debt to society to be redeemed, an outstanding balance of crime credit on his account that only he could repay. The victims argued that his latest sentence was punishment for his latest crimes alone. Politicians, journalists, law-enforcement officers and fitted-up criminals all spoke with one voice when they argued that many of the important questions relating to the Royal Pardon still remained unanswered. They believed that John Haase – and all of his co-conspirators – had not yet been brought to account for the crimes they allegedly committed in pursuit of his freedom.
They began campaigning for justice in earnest. First up was Liverpool Walton MP Peter Kilfoyle, who had been asking questions about John Haase in Parliament ever since he had been stopped from asking questions about the Royal Prerogative on Sky News in 1996. In 2001, encouraged by Haase’s gun-running conviction, Kilfoyle reinvigorated his investigation into the scandal, probing every aspect, from the role of bent coppers to the protocol of handling Customs and Excise informants to the farce of the alleged phoney gun plants. His crushing assault on all of the agencies involved forced even the most obstructive civil servants to open their files and was felt right at the top of government. It reached a searing crescendo in 2004 when Kilfoyle made a graft-busting speech in a House of Commons adjournment debate naming Michael Howard’s cousin Simon Bakerman officially for the first time in connection with the Royal Pardon and the allegations of large sums of money changing hands.
Next into the ring was Thomas Bourke, the garage owner allegedly framed by Haase and Bennett in the Strangeways gun case. Bourke’s family, led by his tireless sister Jo Holt, scrutinised every dodgy aspect of the John Haase case, resulting in 2005 in a leave to appeal against Bourke’s conviction. His case is expected to be heard in 2007.
Further weight was added to the cause by families campaigning for the release of several drug dealers convicted in connection with an infamous bust known as the West Derby job. The families claim that the hand of Haase had a role in the murky affair and have urged the authorities to come clean. A number of other criminals also came forward alleging that they had been stitched up by Haase, others confessing that they had carried out alleged perversions of the course of justice in Haase’s name.
Then came a series of newspaper articles written by me and this book, revealing for the first time credible evidence of gun plants and alleged bribes.
The combination of all four types of campaigns for justice resulted in a Home Office investigation into the Royal Pardons in 2005 led by Chief Inspector of Constabulary Sir Keith Povey. He concluded that there was enough prima facie evidence to warrant a full-blown police investigation. The Metropolitan Police’s specialist crime unit were given the job, generously paid for by the Merseyside force. At the time of going to press, the two-year-long probe codenamed Operation Ainstable has resulted in one alleged conspirator being charged. John Haase has been repeatedly interviewed under caution, as have Chris No-Neck and Ken Darcy, who have been bailed while inquiries continue. Police sources state that between six and eleven men and women are likely to be charged as a result of the probe.
Meanwhile, many of the characters revealed in this book are still around and getting on with their lives.
Peter Kilfoyle MP: Still crusading for justice for all of the victims of drug abuse and organised crime in Liverpool.
John Haase: Still residing at HMP Whitemoor ne
ar Cambridge. He is due for release in 2007 but if charged under Operation Ainstable he is likely to be arrested as he leaves prison and sent back to await trial.
Paul Bennett: Believed to be in Spain or Portugal, but mysterious sightings in Liverpool have been reported. The Scarlet Pimpernel has been in contact with villains in his old Norris Green neighbourhood.
Chris No-Neck: Running a small trade business in Liverpool. Interviewed under caution in connection with gun plants. Ken Darcy: Out of prison and living in Liverpool. Interviewed under caution. Paul Grimes: New life on the witness-protection programme. Suleyman Ergun: Out of prison. Moved to Turkey to recover from an illness in 2006 but now back in the UK.
Yilmaz Kaya: Released from his heroin sentence in 2006 and moved back to Turkey.
The Vulcan: Serving a long sentence for drug trafficking in Italy. Hoping to be extradited to Turkey to finish it off.
Simon Bakerman: Lives in Liverpool with his parents.
The Enforcer: Lives a legitimate life in Liverpool and has given evidence to Operation Ainstable.
The Debt Collector: Runs a security company in Liverpool.
The Supervisor: Waiting for Haase to get out of prison.
Michael Howard: Stood down as leader of the opposition in 2005 but is still an MP.
The Fence: Lives a normal family life in Liverpool but is worried about being dragged into Haase’s investigation.
James Turner: Washed-up old gunslinger sitting out his days in a Liverpool pub.
Colin Borrows: ‘Britain’s first crack dealer’ is still in and out of jail.
The Horsebox: Recovering drug user worried that she might be charged under Operation Ainstable.
Druglord Page 33