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The Essex Murders - Who Killed Goldfinger
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Short filmTranscript
00:00My name is Giovanni Di Stefano. I'm an international lawyer. I defended John Goldfinger-Palmer,
00:13but I've also defended a number of other high-profile cases worldwide, including the Iraqi regime,
00:19Milosevic, Gaddafi, Mugabe, Ian Brady. My latest client is President Bashar Assad,
00:27and it all kicked off, thanks to John Goldfinger-Palmer's case.
00:33John Palmer was and remained to the last day, in my view, a legitimate business entrepreneur.
00:41He was dyslexic, he had a problematic childhood, and he still made a success of his life.
00:48He was richer than the Queen, he sailed close to the wind, sometimes he went over the edge,
00:53and he paid a terrible price for it. But, you know, he was no gangster.
00:59I've never come across a more evil person than John Palmer. So we decided that we would show him up for what he was.
01:07Roger Cook, I'd like to talk to you about money laundering.
01:10About what?
01:11Money laundering.
01:11He was the biggest criminal in Britain at the time. You know, he seriously enjoyed hurting people, or having them hurt.
01:19We've got it all on film. You're going to look amazingly stupid.
01:23He had my address, he knew my movements, and he took out a contract on my life.
01:31John Palmer was not dangerous at all. He wasn't a gangster. That's what I do to Roger Cook.
01:36One of Britain's most notorious gangsters, shot at close range.
01:44But who ordered John Palmer's murder, and why?
01:47You can run on for a long time. Run on for a long time. Run on for a long time.
01:57Soon or later, gotta cut you down. Soon or later, gotta cut you down.
02:06You can run on for a long time.
02:08You can run on for a long time.
02:09You can run on for a long time.
02:13At the beginning of my career, in the 1980s and into the 1990s, I knew John Palmer had written a lot about John Palmer.
02:26He was a big fish in the criminal underworld.
02:28John Palmer was internationally famous as Goldfinger he made a fortune out of fencing
02:40the Brinks Matt gold I'm completely innocent of this so-called Matt Brink bullion ride I know
02:49nothing of it as the jury foreman spoke the words not guilty John Palmer looked to the jury nodded
02:58and then blew them a kiss as he left the dock dodging jail left Palmer a free man with millions in the
03:06bank he headed straight back to Tenerife where he spotted a golden opportunity to put his fortune to
03:13work and this propelled him into the stratosphere of criminality oh I've got him there but big money
03:23leads to big enemies in Tenerife John Palmer was swimming in very dangerous waters and for him
03:34there was going to be no escape
03:53right John Palmer what I want us to do today is review the facts around the day that he was murdered the day
04:05he died my own personal experience of Mickey McAvoy is that he's an extremely dangerous individual
04:19individual
04:41When John Palmer first arrived on the island, it was nothing like it is today.
05:02People dreamed of owning property in the sun.
05:05The land here was cheap, so it was massive investment.
05:08And Palmer saw an opportunity and took advantage.
05:11He invested heavily in timeshare.
05:15So I want to go down to the centre of the main town.
05:20I want to go down and have a look, get a feel and understanding of what was going on at that time.
05:24I'm coming up now to Harley's and the Flamingo Beach Bar, which was one of John Palmer's
05:42original restaurants, clubs, and this is where he operated from.
05:56This was the centre of John Palmer's power back in the day.
06:05Classic cars outside on the front, then going down to Flamingo Beach Bar, and this was the investment.
06:11This was the power base.
06:13This is where the wealth was open.
06:15After his acquittal, his plan was to go straight back to Tenerife and make something of himself.
06:34Being in Tenerife at the right time enabled him to build his empire.
06:42John has always been seeing opportunities and going for them, making the most of everything he possibly could to get as much money as he can.
06:56Because that's what turns him on, because that's what turns him on.
07:07I'm going to meet someone who was investigating John Palmer at the time that John was building his criminal empire on the island.
07:14Now we're headed to the first complex that he bought Palmer here, the island village, which was acquiring many more.
07:33This is all on the village.
07:44When the palmer arrived in the Tenerife, this is not...
07:57This is clear.
07:58Clear, clear, all clear.
08:00Wow.
08:01It's huge.
08:03So why is this important to John Palmer's story?
08:07It's important to the story of John Palmer because it's the first complex that he bought or acquired once he arrived to the island of Tenerife.
08:14And then with this complex of apartment, he found out that it was a business that left a lot of money and went to buy another series of complex to dedicar to the time-sharing.
08:27He came with money and realized that in the island there was no mafia, no delinquency organized.
08:40His business was mainly dedicated to his companions, to the Britannians.
08:46He brought people outside of Tenerife, brought a lot of British salespeople.
08:53Well, in 1991, I had hair, I was a lot slimmer and a lot fitter, loved having fun and loved earning money.
09:16I was 17 years old, I'd never been away from home before.
09:22It was my first job, I was so naive.
09:25It's living in the fast lane, Tenerife.
09:27You know, bars opened all night, nightclubs opened all night.
09:31There was a lot of drugs, there was a lot of alcohol.
09:34The strip, Veronica's, was a very, very popular place to go.
09:38You know, you had the best DJs.
09:40It was just wild and it was like a whole new way of life.
09:44When I first got to Tenerife, I realized that it was dominated by John Palmer and his timeshare industry.
09:52It was totally dominated by him out there.
09:55Well, his timeshare business, he built basically shallets, he built rooms, hotel rooms, luxurious ones,
10:02and people would be able to choose the weeks that they would go and stay on holiday.
10:07And that was their home and their property for that period of time there.
10:11Now in theory, timeshare isn't a bad idea.
10:14What happens is that for a lump sum, you buy the right to use an apartment or villa for particular weeks of the year.
10:20On top of that, you have to pay maintenance, but you do get the chance to swap your weeks for time in another apartment somewhere else in the world.
10:27Fine, if that's what you want.
10:30If I was a person who wanted to buy a timeshare, I would have a look around a resort, choose a timeshare that I would like,
10:36and then I'd buy one or two weeks out of the year for that apartment for the rest of your life, just by paying one fixed fee.
10:43I started for a studio at three and a half grand, for one bed it was about five or six grand, two bed ten to twelve grand.
10:49By 52 weeks of the year, times 200 apartments in each resort, it's a lot of money.
10:54Big money. It's massive money.
10:58In essence, what you're doing is you're selling the same damn thing 52 times.
11:03There's always going to be some trouble in there.
11:05Ah, well can I just say one thing off the record?
11:07I'm not here to invite you anywhere by the way, there you go.
11:10John Palmer's employees were schooled to use absolutely maximum high pressure sales techniques.
11:16It was a bit like double glazing on speed, badgering tourists all day long on the seafronts at the various resorts in Tenerife.
11:25So an OPC is an outside personal contact.
11:30But the locals would call us overpaid cunts.
11:33We were the people on the streets who would give scratch cards to tourists.
11:40Basically, I would approach a couple on the street.
11:44You give the winning ticket to the woman and you give the losing ticket to the man.
11:48That's what I used to do.
11:49We could make up whatever we wanted.
11:51They could either go to the airport and collect their prize.
11:54We're about to the airport.
11:55You'll see as you walk in, there's a big sign.
11:57It says scratch your mouth.
11:58It's a huge great aluminum sign.
11:59You can't miss it.
12:00I used to say that there's a festival on the beachfront.
12:03You can get some free car hire.
12:05You can get a meal for four in Harley's restaurant.
12:08It was all a story.
12:09It was a story to get them stopped.
12:11To think that they would get a free prize, a free bottle of wine, a free drink.
12:15Oh look, you've done it!
12:19The priority was to get the couple in a taxi no matter what.
12:23And when you get them to the resort, if they agree to look around the resort for 90 minutes,
12:28I would get £50.
12:30In a south person, they would take them around the resort.
12:34And then they got the hard sell.
12:36A lot of the south people would say to them that, you know,
12:39don't worry if you change your mind, you can cancel when you get home in England.
12:43But you couldn't.
12:44The money is gone?
12:45The money's gone, yeah.
12:46Is it Palmer's pocket?
12:47That's right.
12:48Stories were emerging in Britain of people investing in the John Palmer type share scheme,
12:57finding they were seriously ripped off.
12:59It's on arrival at the complex that holiday makers say they're confronting the trouble.
13:04Many of them have found that unless they pay management costs in cash up front,
13:10which they've already paid to a firm in London,
13:13then they're not given their keys to their apartments.
13:16I got to realise that, in fact, this is a scam.
13:20So that's when I started to go back and say that we wanted out of the arrangement.
13:24They grabbed him, they hustled him out of the building,
13:27and they then sort of kicked him and got him down on the ground
13:30and they bounced his head on the pavement and on the road.
13:33The story that was emerging was that this was a business run by thugs and gangsters,
13:43that money was being almost extorted from ordinary working people.
13:47And that was saying to us that Palmer must have a lot of influence there
13:52because he didn't seem to be in fear of justice, in fear of law enforcement.
13:57I was in the apartment when I turned around and a man came through the door,
14:06took three paces towards me and commenced hitting me around the head with a baseball bat.
14:17Palmer moved in Tenerife from being a fraudster
14:21to becoming a real organised crime character.
14:24A real mafia don, if you like, in the Canary Islands.
14:29He surrounded himself with people who would go out and commit acts of violence
14:35without any questions asked on his behalf.
14:41The first time I realised that John Palmer had a lot of power
14:43was when he had a party one night.
14:45Lots of people showed up, lots of his friends were there.
14:48One of his friends got attacked by somebody drunk
14:51and John Palmer got the ump about that
14:54and he put out a contract on him.
14:56The fella left the island that night
14:58and then paid 50 grand to come back.
15:01And then when he came back, he disappeared.
15:03A year later, his car was still parked outside the party venue
15:07and it was covered in dust and dirt and everything.
15:09You heard about that?
15:10I heard about that numerous times, yeah.
15:12I did hear about people being murdered,
15:21but I just turned a blind eye to it all
15:25because it wasn't something that I was wanting to know about,
15:30to be honest.
15:31So, yeah, I'm not going to speak any more about that, I'm afraid.
15:39Even now?
15:40No.
15:41Palmer was seen as the mafioso number one
15:52by two things.
15:53He had money, he had a lot of people in his service
15:57and, two, he was a man who didn't shake his hand
16:00to order a fire of a car, a gun,
16:04to give an excrement to that person
16:07who didn't comply with what he believed he had to do.
16:13That makes people scared.
16:18He came to control the island.
16:21He was the real love of the south of Tenerife.
16:25I know I'd go from rags to riches.
16:40As his empire expanded,
16:42John Palmer's wealth went through the roof.
16:45He was earning so much, virtually a million pounds a week,
16:48that he couldn't invest it quick enough,
16:50back into hotels, into port facilities,
16:53marinas, into villas.
16:55This was a top gangster at the top of his form.
16:58My clothes may still be torn and tattered
17:07Him and I never actually talked about
17:09what money he had or what money he didn't have.
17:12Just, we didn't do it.
17:15I wasn't living over there.
17:18So, Tenerife was totally separate from me.
17:21Everything...
17:23We had holidays on Concord
17:25and we were doing everything that we wanted to do
17:27and we had the boat.
17:29He had the private jets
17:31because he was coming backwards and forwards to home anyway.
17:36Apart from everything, his business side of it.
17:39I mean, and it was least...
17:41I mean, loads of people do that.
17:43Tell me...
17:45From our perspective,
17:46John Palmer's lifestyle on Tenerife
17:48was that of a rock star.
17:50You know, he looked to be unstoppable.
17:52But when he appeared in the Sunday Times rich list,
17:56up there with the same amount of money as the Queen,
17:58it started to make the yard think
18:00that there had to be something in this that was criminal.
18:04We need to look even more closely at this man.
18:06How did he get to be this rich?
18:10My fate is up to you
18:18Driving a buggy through the grounds of his Essex home,
18:28one of Britain's most notorious gangsters,
18:31John Goldfinger Palmer,
18:33and watching him in the garden,
18:35a contract killer who would later shoot him dead.
18:40I heard John Palmer was dead in a news bullet
18:42and very shortly afterwards,
18:43people who knew I had an interest
18:45rung me to tell me that he had been assassinated.
18:50I did not feel sorry at all for his departure.
18:53I thought the world was rid of a really nasty piece of work.
18:58Well, I've had an interest in John Palmer for a very long time.
19:02The man was evil, pure evil, I think.
19:05So we decided that we would show him up for what he was.
19:14The Cook Report was a very, very popular investigative programme.
19:21It tackled all sorts of subjects.
19:24We're in Red Square and on our way to a secret meeting
19:28to buy plutonium to make a nuclear bomb.
19:32We had a very wide variety of subjects,
19:34like buying weapons-grade plutonium from the Russian Mafia.
19:37That was the hairiest one we ever did.
19:40Once we had the evidence,
19:41we would then organise to confront the malefactor.
19:44Hello, my name's Roger Cook from Central Television.
19:47And some of them, of course, turned violent.
19:49Leave him alone.
19:50Leave him alone.
19:52During the course of it,
19:53I used to think it was like lion taming.
19:55If you showed fear, you'd had it.
19:57On Tenerife, John Palmer was a very powerful man.
20:07Some people thought the most powerful.
20:10He used to boast he had the judiciary and the police force in his pocket,
20:13and he could do anything he liked.
20:16If he didn't get his way by fair means, which he very rarely did,
20:20he'd do it by foul.
20:22Well, we had an editorial meeting in the Cook Report offices in Birmingham,
20:26and one of the subject letters we wanted to investigate was money laundering.
20:29We spoke to a lot of people, lots of senior police officers,
20:33and the one name that kept coming up was John Palmer.
20:39Palmer very quickly got into money laundering
20:41because timeshare is an ideal way of doing it.
20:45He had a legitimate business, and he manipulated it
20:48so that he was able to have millions of pounds
20:51going through the companies that he set up.
20:55He began to launder money for the Colombian cartels
20:58because he had a big cocaine habit himself,
21:00and it made him lots and lots of money.
21:03Actually, in the end, it made him more than timeshares.
21:06Our research showed that huge amounts of money,
21:09as much as 400 million, were being sifted through his many accounts.
21:17He was able to conceal the true origins of this money
21:20by laundering it through a vast web of international companies
21:25in a number of different offshore tax havens,
21:28almost impossible, in fact impossible to trace.
21:33We did a deal with the metropolitan police
21:36to investigate his money laundering activities
21:39while they concentrated on timeshare.
21:42It is unusual for the police to work in that way with a journalist,
21:47but you have to remember that Roger Cook at the time
21:50had a tremendous reputation.
21:52He had like 12 million viewers.
21:55His journalism was regarded as really being integrity-based,
21:59and we were very happy that what he was going to do
22:01was a legitimate operation.
22:03We wanted to find a way of showing John Palmer
22:05as the unprincipled man he was,
22:07and we thought the best way to do that
22:09would be to get him to offer to launder money from drugs.
22:13The only way we could do that
22:14was find some realistic people to do the deal with him.
22:18General Kun Saar cuts open raw opium,
22:23which will be refined into heroin.
22:26Kun Saar was a warlord in Burma,
22:28who was the biggest heroin producer in the world at that time.
22:31As he produces 80% of the world's heroin,
22:35the potential profits for a money launderer would be staggering.
22:39So as a result of a programme we had made earlier,
22:41when we wanted to get a couple of drug barons,
22:44we sent a message to him on a cleft stick,
22:47and he said, of course you can,
22:48and sent out two of his men who were the real article,
22:51and John Palmer couldn't fault them
22:53because they were the real article.
22:56So we thought he'd go for something that big.
23:01First, the Burmese wanted happy snaps to take home.
23:05This is with a special hook.
23:07We've finished all the other.
23:09Astonishingly, Palmer came himself,
23:11sitting cross-legged on the floor
23:13with the Burmese, eating a Thai meal.
23:16That was when we knew we had him hooked completely.
23:21He told Saan Porn that he kept at least one bank account,
23:24especially for the purpose of money laundering.
23:27Balance of 10 million dollars.
23:28It's difficult for him to check me.
23:30Yeah.
23:31Our business is in Spain.
23:32Our banks are in offshore England.
23:34Yeah.
23:3590% is legitimate money.
23:38I watched the secret recordings more or less as live,
23:41and I just couldn't stop grinning.
23:43He was digging a big, big hole,
23:46which is exactly what we wanted him to do.
23:48In the house we'd rented for Kunsa's men,
23:50Palmer put a price on his services.
23:53I think he'd probably be selling my 25%.
23:5625%?
23:57Because I have to do it properly.
24:00This is a meeting in the muse house that we rented.
24:04I'm not cheap, but I'm good.
24:06Oh, yeah.
24:07He soon began to relax and realize that he was going to do some serious business in Southeast Asia.
24:13If you give me a million dollars, I'll take a million from my bank.
24:17Yeah.
24:18This is clean money.
24:19Yeah.
24:20I need minimum six weeks.
24:22I can handle 50 million every six months.
24:25He was offering to launder vast quantities of drugs money,
24:29and to top it all, he asked these drugs barons whether they could provide him with unidentifiable soldiers to act as enforcers for him.
24:38So, if I want something done, somebody making problems with me, big problems,
24:44you can give me some soldier from you, some men.
24:47Yeah.
24:48Yeah?
24:49No problem.
24:50No problem.
24:51The confrontation was meticulously planned.
24:52I mean, we thought of every possible variation, and we made it very convincing.
24:57So, Palmer actually turned up on his own.
25:04Mr. Palmer, Roger Cook, I'd like to talk to you about money laundering.
25:07About what?
25:08Money laundering.
25:09We've been listening to every conversation you've had with George...
25:11He was so shocked.
25:12You could tell on his face, as it dawned on him, that he'd been conned by the Cook Report.
25:18I don't know what you're talking about.
25:20We've recorded every one of the conversations you've had with the Representative Kunsa.
25:23We've just heard you offering to launder money.
25:26We've heard you offering to launder at least three million.
25:28We have.
25:29We have the tape of it.
25:30Everything you've said has been recorded.
25:32Everything, including requests for enforcers.
25:39He denied all knowledge of any of these nefarious activities, and then got into a taxi which he'd hailed, and looking ridiculously smug.
25:48Which you knew it was.
25:49I wish I had it.
25:50You had?
25:51The taxi starts to move away, but as luck would have it, the lights turned red.
25:58Roger went in again and opened the door and started talking to him.
26:01Just extraordinary.
26:03So, tell us more about the laundering.
26:06You were laundering money.
26:08You were offering to launder 60 million dollars a year from what you knew was drugs money.
26:16The people you've been talking with come from Kunsa.
26:19Never heard of it.
26:20I don't know what we're doing.
26:21We've got it all on film.
26:22You're going to look amazingly stupid.
26:24As soon as Roger Cook had confronted him, we were raiding all of Palmer's premises, looking for evidence to support what we believe was the timeshare fraud against British subjects, and therefore something that we could prosecute.
26:40The taxi driver phoned us the next day and said, we'd gone about two streets up the road, and he started phoning all his offices around the country, only to find that the police had raided them at the very moment that we were doorstepping him at the Ritz Hotel.
26:55So he got so angry, he flung his phone out of the open window.
26:59It was just amazing.
27:01What did John say about Roger Cook?
27:04Well, as usual, he said he was tricked into it.
27:15Made him look a bit silly, really.
27:20What Roger Cook did, and the way that we worked together with him, was the key to opening up the timeshare empire, and ultimately Palmer's downfall.
27:31Scotland Yard initially investigated John Palmer on suspicion of money laundering, but senior detectives eventually decided they had a better chance of convicting him on the timeshare fraud.
27:54This was what I call payback for being acquitted in Brink's map.
27:59The state were out to get John Palmer.
28:02One way or to the other, by hook or by crook, they were going to get him.
28:10John Palmer turned up at the Old Bailey wearing a bulletproof vest, saying that he was a target.
28:14And he wore it throughout the trial.
28:17The threat against John Palmer was huge.
28:20You know, he was facing a trial which could have earned him 14 years in prison.
28:24And I think a lot of criminals on the outside would have been thinking that he would do anything to mitigate that position.
28:31And I think he was extremely vulnerable at that point.
28:34Palmer was charged with conning 16,500 timeshare customers out of £30 million.
28:43The difference with John Palmer's trial was he decided to defend himself.
28:48I'd been a police officer for 27 years.
28:51I'd never been cross-examined by a defendant acting on their own behalf.
28:57He thought he knew best, as John Palmer always did.
29:02John Palmer asked me, you know, why were we following him?
29:05Why were we spending all this money on him, as it were?
29:09And I told him that it was because we believed he was a serious and organised criminal.
29:13Which outraged Palmer, who's kept turning to the jury and saying, I'm not a gangster. I'm not a gangster.
29:19Well, I spoke to Palmer and asked him how he got on in court there.
29:23And he actually did tell me that he regretted that he didn't have counsel.
29:27Jesus, he could easily have afforded it. He was one of the richest people in the UK.
29:32A massive mistake.
29:34During a long trial, he told the jury there had been a fraud,
29:37but that was done by others who were running the company for him.
29:41Palmer claimed that he was let down by people he worked with.
29:44That's complete rubbish. He controlled the whole thing.
29:46Nothing happened in his organisation without his direct involvement.
29:51He orchestrated absolutely everything.
29:54And if you didn't do it his way, you got seriously hurt.
29:58A wealthy businessman has been found guilty of swindling £30 million from holidaymakers in a timeshare fraud.
30:0551-year-old John Palmer has been convicted of defrauding 17,000 tourists on the island of Tenerife.
30:12He still had a chauffeur and minders too, but the transport had changed rather as Britain's wealthiest villain was driven off to prison.
30:27I think the reality of John Palmer's life following the conviction was very different.
30:33He was going to prison for quite a long time.
30:36He was not in financial control of his businesses in Tenerife.
30:41He was in a very difficult and vulnerable position.
30:44When he was in prison, he clearly lost a lot of his cachet, a lot of his reputation.
30:50People didn't want to be associated with a man who was so publicly humiliated and was such a public target.
30:58If you've had the kind of life that John Palmer has had, he's got to look over his shoulder because things were falling apart for him.
31:09How come you and John never got divorced?
31:12I did try, but he would just not sign the papers.
31:21So, and of course, he was in prison quite a bit.
31:27So, when John died, we were still husband and wife.
31:34As John said to me a long time after, when I said to him, what's happened to us?
31:40And he said, it was all the Brinks map, because it changed everything about us, about how we were.
31:50Do you miss those days?
31:54Yes, I do.
31:57He was, he was, um, a special person to me.
32:03So, yeah, I do.
32:20So, Tony, what happened to Palmer's empire when he was in prison?
32:26Well, well, the empire of John Palmer, without John Palmer being present in Tenerife, it doesn't work well.
32:33He leaves a cargo of his companies, his men of Pajas, his testaferros,
32:39that they don't know how to manage the business as he was.
32:43And the business, evidently, he was not the same.
32:46Aparte, there was more competition.
32:48There was the man who was his right hand, who also wants a part of this tata, Mohamed Ervay.
32:54And there was a lot of Russians with money.
32:57You have to take into account that John Palmer left a lot of enemies behind him.
33:02A lot of enemies and very powerful.
33:04So, we're going to meet a really important man here in Tenerife.
33:26John Palmer's enforcer, Mohamed Ervay.
33:29At one stage, he was Palmer's right hand man.
33:33Then they became bitter enemies in a power struggle on the island.
33:37He seems to have taken over here when Palmer was jailed.
33:41This is a man alleged to have been involved with intimidation, violence,
33:46never been prosecuted and convicted.
33:50So, we're on our way now to meet him at his business premises.
33:53And I want to see whether or not he knows or has got any ideas as to who really killed John Palmer.
33:59And what the motive was.
34:10Hello Mr Durban, David.
34:12How are you?
34:13You okay?
34:14Good to see you.
34:15Thank you so much for meeting with me.
34:18Any help you need.
34:19That's brilliant.
34:20Because you're not doing the wrong thing.
34:21You're doing the right things.
34:22Brilliant.
34:23And people, if they understand that, they're supposed to do it to help you.
34:26What I want to do is ask you some questions about John's life.
34:29And potentially, you know, what led to John's death.
34:33Yeah, it's no problem.
34:35You know, it's whatever I can have about John's life.
34:39Because, you know, and everybody knows how I am close to John from the beginning and even before he died.
34:44...
34:45...
34:46...
34:47...
34:48...
34:50...
34:51Oh, what's that?
35:18Blimey.
35:19That was not what I expected.
35:23I mean, I've made notes, but Moe is without doubt the most powerful man on the island, no doubt about it.
35:34He told me the whole history of John and him, but what was important was that Moe and John were best mates at the end.
35:44And Moe was looking after John. John had lost his power on this island and Moe was looking after him and Moe is looking after the family as well.
35:52But it was incredible. He spoke about John's wealth and how John lost that wealth, what happened throughout the period when John was in prison and how he looked after him in prison.
36:10But he said that John had got greedy and that's what had happened towards the end. John had got greedy when he was buying up properties, but he was also borrowing money.
36:21And so he was having to pay interest back on that money. And he said that John, towards the end of his life, his exact words, John just wanted peace.
36:30And he just wanted to get on with his life. He wanted to go fishing. He just wanted an easy life. The money had gone and he just wanted to get on with his life.
36:39The one thing that was quite clear is he says that if John had stayed in Tenerife, he would have been safe.
36:46He went back for that gallbladder operation. And that's what got him killed. If he'd have stayed in Tenerife, he would have had the protection of Moe and his people, whereas John went back and that ultimately led to his death.
37:02So it was a, it was a mind blowing interview and I'm going to have to sit down and seriously put all this together because it was, it was, it was so much, there was so much there.
37:15And then I need to follow through on the leads that he's given me to establish whether or not there's any cooperation for those leads.
37:32Moe portrayed Palma as charismatic but volatile, capable of both generosity and extreme violence.
37:48He recalled various violent episodes and criminal entanglements involving numerous people, major crime families and organised crime from across the world,
37:59including the Italian Gomorrah and also links to Russians, also vast scale money laundering all around the timeshare.
38:09But they were making eight to 10 million pounds a month, making.
38:14He said that the cash flow issues presented by Palma's arrest led to Palma's downfall.
38:21The biggest opportunity that came out of his, he spoke about a man who he described as a British accountant,
38:28that clearly Moe Durba didn't like, he called him a grass.
38:33And so I need to now track that person down.
38:36Back in the 90s, after serving time in prison for fraud,
38:57I decided to have a fresh start in Tenerife, away from the British police,
39:02and set up a company dealing with high net worth individuals, advising them how to minimise their tax.
39:13I had clients from all over Europe, including John Palma's former right-hand man, Mohamed Durba.
39:21And at that time, I realised that some of my clients were in fact mafia members, or just gangsters.
39:33So I became an informant on behalf of the Spanish Secret Services.
39:37So I gathered lots of information on all these individuals.
39:47So I've got a mountain of evidence.
39:51Tape recordings.
39:55Documents.
39:57Everything.
40:00And because of that information and intel,
40:02I know who killed John Palma.
40:29Hello, Paul.
40:30How are you?
40:31I'm David.
40:33Pleased to meet you.
40:34And you.
40:35Good to meet you.
40:37Paul, I've come up to see you.
40:39Yes.
40:40About the murder of John Palma.
40:43So what's your involvement in all this?
40:44How did you get involved in it all?
40:46I'm an offshore financial consultant.
40:48Right.
40:49I was working in Spain.
40:51What part of John's life was this?
40:53This was late 2000s.
40:55So that was when he was out of prison?
40:57Yes.
40:58Right.
40:58And I had a client who was worth 25 billion pounds.
41:03Million or billion?
41:04Billion.
41:04Billion?
41:05Billion.
41:06And he was involved in a property deal in Moscow called Project Moscow.
41:11Right.
41:12Which my client had invested in.
41:15Project Moscow was a development of a shopping complex in Moscow.
41:25And from looking at all the accounting records to do with that, I came across a Russian oligarch called Boris.
41:32Boris Berezovsky?
41:34Correct.
41:34Right.
41:35So where does John Palma fit into all of this?
41:38John Palma had some links to Boris because he was dealing with Boris.
41:45Do you know what sort of business?
41:47Property in Tenerife.
41:48So he was investing in property in Tenerife?
41:54He was, yes.
41:54Right.
41:55Yes.
41:56Back in the 90s, before prison, John Palma decided to open an office in Moscow, selling Timeshare.
42:04And that was very, very successful.
42:07But to do business in Russia at that time was you had to be in with the mafia, otherwise you didn't operate.
42:13But then once he's in business with them, he's got access to funds, borrowed funds from them.
42:21So now he's borrowing monies as well.
42:23Wow.
42:24And this is a lot of money borrowed from a lot of highly dangerous people in Russia.
42:34OK.
42:35So how do you back up, you know, what you've said to us today?
42:38I have tape recordings.
42:39Right.
42:40And this is a recording of a colleague of mine interviewing Mohamed Derva.
42:45This recording for me demonstrates just why John Palma got killed.
42:51Right.
42:51OK, go on.
42:54Someone said that Palma's jet was often seen at Moscow Airport.
43:02Well, at that time, all the time, the jet there went to pick up the money cash.
43:06You said that it was one million pound a week coming in from Russia.
43:15The Russian mafia and the Russian people, they said, OK, give money, make investment to take the money out.
43:22And they keep the apartment in Lagomere.
43:25And now the problem is that Lagomere does not exist.
43:34Land has already sold half of it.
43:36No building.
43:38So he was taking money from the Russian mafia to exist in timeshare and not deliver it?
43:44He no hand over delivering anything.
43:46In the secret filming that we did, at the time, we had no prior knowledge about John Palma's Russian connections until he started talking about it.
44:06This is a full transcript of one of our meetings with John Palma, a lunch meeting.
44:13And he was very open about his business in Russia, doing business with the communists and ex-KGB agents, including the Russian mafia.
44:25We then started tracking his plane from Tenerife via Geneva, where he had bank accounts, before he flew on to Russia.
44:35He told us during our secret filming that he had opened offices in Moscow, in St. Petersburg,
44:42where at that time, Vladimir Putin was the deputy mayor of St. Petersburg and in charge of the external investment committee.
44:50There was a story about him inviting Gorbachev to Tenerife in two weeks' time, he says here, to talk about timeshare.
45:02You know, it sounds as if he was exaggerating, but this actually happened.
45:06Gorbachev did go to the Canary Islands.
45:09It's extraordinary, really.
45:11John Palma was doing really well in Russia, and then he got arrested for the timeshare fraud.
45:24Right.
45:25He can't touch his assets, he can't touch his money, and now Palma is absolutely in debt up to his eyeballs.
45:33He's out of his league.
45:34This is not gangsterism in Tenerife.
45:38You're at a different level.
45:39Do you know how much debt Palma was in?
45:43He's heavily in debt, to the tune of a million pounds a week.
45:46Wow.
45:47Interest is.
45:48That's interest.
45:48That's just interest.
45:49That's just interest.
45:50Wow.
45:50A million pounds a week.
45:52But now if we fast forward, John Palma's out of prison, he can't pay his debt.
45:57That is when you become a liability.
46:00Exactly what happened to people who were involved in Project Moscow.
46:04The Russian mafia have killed several people on British soil, all associated with Project Moscow.
46:15Inside his multi-million pound mansion, Verazovsky was found dead in his bath by his bodyguard.
46:21He was murdered, and it was made to look as if it was a suicide.
46:27Scott Young's body was found in Montague Square on Monday evening.
46:30Did he fall onto these railings in London from the building above, or was he pushed?
46:36Scott Young.
46:36They killed him also, all on the orders of the Russian mafia.
46:41Suddenly you're putting all the pieces of the jigsaw together.
46:44You've got the Russian mafia, you've got Project Moscow, you know, a series of deaths in the UK.
46:51You've got John Palma, Vastettes.
46:55And they're all interconnected.
46:57Everything's connected.
46:58One way or another.
46:59Wow.
46:59Tell me what you think happened, how John was murdered.
47:06My trusted client told me the Russian mafia, they put out the hit on John Palma, and assassins carried out the hit.
47:17So do you think that you're putting two and two together, or is that something that you specifically were told?
47:24This is what they've been actually being told.
47:26Right.
47:27Yeah.
47:29It's an extraordinary theory, but it's very difficult for me to back up.
47:38If Paul is right, and John ripped off the Russian mafia in a big way, their desire to kill him is plausible.
47:44But it doesn't prove anything.
47:47But it does open up the possibility of a line of inquiry.
47:52Russian OCGs are clearly capable of killing people on British soil, but they don't get their hands dirty.
47:59They employ professional hitmen to carry out the murders for them.
48:04It's happened in other cases, and we've seen it.
48:06Hitmen and assassins coming into the country and then escaping.
48:09So if I can identify who pulled the trigger, I may be able to establish who ordered the hit on John Palma.
48:18They've been described as a murderous, drug-dealing cartel.
48:30What was he burning?
48:33Was that the motive for John Palma's murder?
48:35They found all sorts of weird stuff.
48:40He was here to kill.
48:43You've got a professional assassin coming into the UK, into Essex, two weeks before the murder of John Palma.
48:50This is dynamite.
48:51What was the purpose of John Palma!
49:16Oh, please.
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