Organised criminals were able to infiltrate Scotland Yard “at will” by bribing corrupt officers, according to an explosive report leaked to The Independent. The Metropolitan Police file, written in 2002, found Britain’s biggest force suffered “endemic corruption” at the time.
Operation Tiberius concluded that syndicates such as the notorious Adams family and the gang led by David Hunt had bribed scores of former and then-serving detectives to access confidential databases; obtain live intelligence on criminal investigations; provide specialist knowledge of surveillance, technical deployment and undercover techniques to help evade prosecution; and even take part in criminal acts such as mass drug importation and money laundering.
The strategic intelligence scoping exercise – “ratified by the most senior management” at Scotland Yard – found murder investigations had been infiltrated and sensitive intelligence regarding other organised crime investigations had been leaked, allowing the offenders to escape justice.
The author lamented the Met’s inability to root out the problem. More worryingly, he also appeared to question Scotland Yard’s commitment to tackle organised crime corruption in the ranks. “For whatever reason, the current approach is simply to wait for the corruption intelligence to surface and to then react to it,” Tiberius concluded.
Later, it added: “These syndicates are organised and all working towards the common goals of making profit, laundering their money, evading prosecution and preventing the forfeiture of their assets. The achievement of these goals is focused and determined; the law enforcement investigation should follow this lead.”
Tiberius identified 80 corrupt individuals with links to the police, including 42 then-serving officers and 19 former detectives.
It concluded: “Organised crime is currently able to infiltrate the MPS at will.”
Research conducted by The Independent suggests that only a tiny number of the officers named as corrupt have been convicted.
Keith Vaz, who chairs the Home Affairs Select Committee, said: “I am deeply concerned by the findings of this report. It is vital that the police have the utmost integrity. The public must be able to trust them to do their job and ensure justice prevails.
“The Met have made vast progress rooting out corruption in the force in the last 20 years but it would appear more may still need to be done.”
Mr Vaz added he would be writing to the current Met Commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, to “ensure that these allegations have been fully investigated and to confirm that he is satisfied that corruption no longer exists”.
The report, produced by a team led by the former Met assistant commissioner Andy Hayman, paints a shocking picture of security at the time inside Scotland Yard, which had responsibility for the UK’s counter-terror operations.
Working in secret, the Tiberius team drew on multiple sources of information including covert informants, intelligence from telephone intercepts, briefings from the security services and thousands of historic police files.
One senior investigating officer interviewed by the inquiry said at the time: “I feel that… I cannot carry out an ethical murder investigation without the fear of it being compromised.”
In one case, the report names an alleged corrupt officer who was inexplicably put in charge of a team investigating a gangland murder linked to organised crime.
Other officers Tiberius says were known to be corrupt were also identified as working on inquiries into organised crime, many of which resulted in compromised investigations and, in some cases, failed prosecutions.
Some relationships between Met officers and the criminal underworld were so close that in one case named police officers were identified as co-owning properties and even racehorses with a man suspected of being one of Britain’s most hardened gangsters.
In one shocking case, a police statement taken from a highly sensitive witness was found in the safe of a nightclub controlled by the Adams family – described by Operation Tiberius as the “major crime family in north London”.
The report stated the named witness was helping police try to solve the murder of Michael Olymbious, who the police believed had been killed after losing £1.5m of ecstasy pills owned by the syndicate.
Tiberius also found a secret informant – codenamed “Lee Paul” – providing intelligence on the Adams family and the corrupt police in its pay to his handler at the Met, who appears to have been a man of integrity.
However, Paul’s highly sensitive role was later uncovered by other officers and his activities became more widely known, causing uproar among the corrupt elements inside the Yard.
Categories: Societal
Engineering Evil 