STRANGE FRUIT
Liverpool, Lemo and the Bizzies: An Informant's Story
The prime minister, royal family and senior police officers are facing embarrassment over an explosive complaint currently under review by a panel of judges who oversee the legality of covert operations by state agents.
A former high level informant inside international organised crime has told the Investigative Powers Tribunal (IPT) he was “used and abused” then fitted up for drug trafficking to cover up wide-ranging corruption.
The complaint is against Merseyside police, who ran the informant, the National Crime Agency (NCA), who investigated him, and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), who unsuccessfully put him on trial.
Sir Kier Starmer was director of public prosecutions at the time of the informant’s trial for trafficking £13m of cocaine, which collapsed after vital material was withheld from his defence.
Alongside his IPT complaint, the informant is now demanding the return of documents and a cache of secret recordings seized from his safe that could severely embarrass the police and royal family.
They include meetings with his handlers and discussions about corruption among senior ranks of Merseyside police.
The informant, a security consultant with a military background, also secretly recorded the fall out over a shooting incident involving Prince Andrew.
The royal was visiting a country estate when the informant was shot chasing two unknown intruders who escaped.
Recently disclosed police documents confirm he was a “deniable” high level informant inside organised crime groups in Liverpool and London until his arrest for conspiring to smuggle cocaine through an exotic fruit company he had set up with his brother, a retired Merseyside detective.
The prosecution collapsed five years later after Merseyside police finally disclosed evidence that he had tipped off his police handler about the drug conspiracy.
It also emerged that the SOCA officers running the drugs operation with Merseyside police were being secretly investigated for corrupt links to one of the UK’s leading organised crime groups led by David Hunt.
An MP has taken up the 61-year-old security consultant’s case but cannot be named because that would disclose the area where he is now living in fear for his safety from gangsters and the police.
The MP wrote to the government and Dan Jarvis, the security minister, responded suggesting a complaint could be made to the IPT, which examines abuse by police and the intelligence services.
The IPT received the complaint in January and are processing thousands of pages detailing the informant’s activities in the UK and abroad, where he says he also bugged an African government minister for MI6.
The former soldier says he started off informing on organised crime in 1995 while managing the security of a Merseyside public transport company, which had a close relationship with the local force.
He says concerns were raised about cash payments in a black briefcase going to a senior officer and the cover up of a gangland murder outside one of the bus garages.
The security consultant then worked for aristocrats with close ties to the royal family and Merseyside police, whose country estate housed a secret eavesdropping station.
It was here that the informant was shot in a struggle with unknown assailants while Prince Andrew was visiting the aristocrat, whose wife was an old flame.
A story claiming the shooting incident involved poachers was subsequently fed to the national media.
The security consultant set up a company in Liverpool importing fruit from Africa and South America with his brother.
However, in 2011 the NCA’s predecessor SOCA (Serious Organised Crime Agency) arrested the pair for conspiring to import over 100 kilos of cocaine in a consignment of pineapples from Costa Rica.
Since his acquittal in 2016, the informant has suffered further physical and mental decline. He now lives as a recluse, too afraid to go out during the day for fear that he will be killed or fitted up.
His IPT claim alleges multiple human rights breaches and seeks damages for “trauma” caused by his informant activities and the “torture” of being prosecuted to cover up police misconduct.
It argues that Merseyside police has a duty of care to him but instead threw him under the bus because he knew about alleged kickbacks and could also expose the “illegal” way he was handled as an informant inside Liverpool’s drug war.
The IPT complaint says:
“I have lost my belongings, my status, my humility, my family and my health. It is beyond comprehension that, having sacrificed so much to enable the police to achieve and obtain the intelligence so crucial in today’s environment, it is deemed in any way acceptable to catastrophically destroy me and my life.”
The informant wants a new identity and to be relocated to Europe to reduce the risk of reprisals from organised crime.
The Upsetter first started investigating this case back in 2013 just as SOCA became the NCA.
Within days of making calls, the NCA’s head of counter corruption gave this reporter an official warning there was a threat to his life from the Hunt organised crime group.
The IPT complaint, if it proceeds to a full hearing, is likely to cause consternation from Liverpool to London among law enforcement agencies, the spies and their back channels to organised crime.
The complaint is revealed today in this exclusive on Liverpool’s gang war for control of the lemo (cocaine) trade.
G’wed.
