Powder Wars (25 page)

This time, though, it would be different. Many people now perceived him to be ‘untouchable'. A gangster who had been ‘made', green-lighted, granted a get-out-of-jail-free pass by none other than the Home Secretary himself. It was a passport to the super-league. Senior customs officers and policemen were in despair. If John Haase turned to organised crime again, how could they bring a man like that down?

21

Big Brother Security

Not surprisingly, within weeks of his release from prison in 1996 John Haase was back in business as a Liverpool Mafia godfather. Bigger, badder and better than ever before. Brimming with confidence and driven by a hunger for money and power that was as frightening as it was unfathomable, Haase's nihilistic emptiness was painful to be around. Friends shied away from looking into his thousand-yard-stare eyes, cowering like weak dogs from his visceral, brutish outbursts.

Haase was a real-life Scarface, fired up by the same cut-throat ambitions that had driven the refugee drug dealer from Cuba to make it big, whatever the cost, in Miami. The world is yours, he convinced himself. The ink on the Queen's Pardon was barely dry when Haase set to work rekindling his heroin and cocaine contacts. The Turkish Connection was re-established with a vengeance and heavyweight shipments of brown and white began to flood in.

Then Haase began to diversify his criminal empire at break-neck speed; wholesale gun-running, money laundering, extortion, kidnapping, cigarette smuggling, armed robbery, organised hijacking, contract violence, protection rackets, debt collecting. The crime spree was breathtaking in its velocity, range and depth and there was nothing that anyone could do about it. The authorities and the rest of the underworld had to stand back, backs against the wall, as the unstoppable tornado swept through town destroying everything in its path.

Haase's return to crime made a laughing stock of the Home Secretary and the Customs officers who had lobbied for his release. In the controversial secret report that had been submitted to the trial judge and then sent to Michael Howard, Haase's handler, Customs officer Paul Cook, had concluded: ‘It is my considered opinion that such is the impact of this case on the defendants that, for differing reasons, it is highly unlikely that they would revert to a life of crime upon their ultimate release.'

Those words would come back to haunt the authorities.

For the Customs and Excise, Haase was too politically charged a target to take on. He was a walking media time bomb. His every move seemed to make headlines and heap embarrassment on 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 informant on remand and begun feeding Customs information on the whereabouts of guns and drugs, Haase was a fully fledged, signed-up, official grass.

That meant that 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 officers continued to meet Haase following his 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. Customs officers met Haase in order to discuss how they could limit the damage being done to the Government by his case in the press, to keep him away from reporters and to return property.

These meetings were detailed in a witness statement later given by Haase's handler, Paul Cook. Cook revealed:

In 1998, just at the time when the authorities should have been trying to get closer to Haase in an effort to monitor and curtail his resurgent racketeering, they cut off all links. A bombshell memo from Customs boss Steve Rowton to Haase's handler, Paul Cook, dated 3 August 1998, and referred to in Point 6 above in Cook's statement, read:

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. As Haase stepped up his drug dealing and gun-running, he set up a legitimate front business, a ‘security' company called Big Brother, to cover his tracks.

In the old days gangsters bought nightclubs or went into the olive oil business to front their rackets. But this was '90s Britain and door teams were now the building blocks of organised crime. ‘Security consultancy' was the perfect business to mask a multitude of sins.

Haase realised this and set up Big Brother with a two-pronged business plan in mind. One side of the operation was to ‘take over' the doors (provide bouncers) for as many of the nightclubs and pubs in Liverpool as possible. The other side was to provide security guards for commercial premises such as building sites and shops. This would not only generate revenue, but also provide a pool of hard men to use as footsoldiers in his crime war on society.

Last but not least, the business would provide excellent cover for organised crime.

In the classic mobster tradition, like Al Capone Haase maintained to his public that he was a ‘legitimate businessman' plagued by insinuations that he was a racketeer because of his shady past. ‘It is a slur on my reputation,' he would say.

The parody bordered on the comical. In an interview with the
Liverpool Echo
Haase managed to keep a straight face as he lied:

Haase gushed that finding a woman had softened him up:

Haase played the old community benefactor card as he went in for the PR (over)kill:

Menacingly Haase added: ‘I am endeavouring to provide an expert service to my clients and have not received any complaint from either a client or a member of the public.' Knowing full well that anyone who complained would be hit so hard and fast they would never dare to speak out again. The complaints department at Big Brother was not known for its customer relations. Disgruntled clients were often hospitalised and their houses blown up.

The payoff from Haase's extraordinary PR puff was an Orwellian masterpiece, so diametrically opposite to the truth as to be absurd: ‘Life is so different for me now and I just hope that the public will give me the chance to show that I have changed.'

Behind the scenes Haase continued to rob the public blind and lure their children into a twilight world of drug abuse en masse. His reign was an orgy of non-stop crime. His team of rapid-fire, round-the-clock racketeers, addicted to cocaine and explosive violence, got up in the morning and literally drug dealt, extorted and armed robbed their way through the day.

In the morning they would take delivery of six kilos of heroin, in the afternoon they would send a cache of guns to Scotland and in the evening they would petrol bomb a nightclub. And then they would go to work, as doormen on Liverpool's buzzing but brutal nightclub scene. There they would fight gun-slinging turf wars with rival door teams, kidnap drug dealers and broker the sale of swag – lorry loads of stolen whisky and designer sportswear worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Haase's PR smokescreen seemed to work. Big Brother security won a string of lucrative legit contracts. Astonishingly, Haase's company took over the security at a parish church, a story so preposterously absurd it 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 of St Peter.'

The impropriety of a convicted drug dealer running a high-profile security firm, which guarded the public at prestigious venues such as McDonald's at Liverpool FC's Anfield Stadium, sparked further controversy in the press. In the
Sunday Telegraph
, industry bosses called for Haase to be closed and for urgent regulation to prevent him from starting up again.

This was all very worrying for the police and Customs and Excise. How could they take on Haase? How could they get close to him? How could they gather the evidence to put him away again? Putting Haase's ‘political protection' aside, there were very definite technical and logistical problems associated with mounting an operation against him.

Haase's organisation was virtually impenetrable to outsiders. His inner circle were all old hands, hardened criminals whom he trusted as much as he could trust anyone. Having been through the supergrass system, Haase knew the threat posed by informants and was too cute to be caught out by the standard techniques.

Worryingly, like many modern criminals schooled in the cloak-and-dagger world of drug trafficking, Haase was an expert in counter-surveillance. He had access to state-of-the-art anti-bugging devices and secret video cameras. A cell of expert trackers able to watch and follow law enforcement officers who were watching them was on stand-by round-the-clock. They had blacked-out surveillance vans, long-lens cameras and scrambled walkie-talkies. The shadowy team could be deployed to set up a kidnap or secure an environment at short notice on Haase's orders.

Highly paid private detectives able to pull phone bills, medical records and bank details were on the payroll. Ex-directory phone numbers and addresses of rival criminals and police officers were just a phone call away. Haase also had corrupt policemen, lawyers and prison officers in his pocket. All in all, it was a nightmare scenario for police and Customs officers wishing to mount an operation against him.

Haase's inaccessibility was further assured by the constant presence of bodyguards. Even his wedding looked like a scene from
The Godfather
, Scouse-style. Haase's busty bride, Debbie, arrived at Brougham Terrace Registry Office in Liverpool in a cream Rolls Royce wearing a white dress. One onlooker said: ‘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 conclusion was bleak; it seemed as though Haase was victorious and there was nothing or no one who could stop him.

22

The In

Reload, Paul Grimes. In 1997, Paul came out of supergrass retirement to take on Britain's Public Enemy Number One face-to-face.