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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.
02:06It's a good idea.
02:09At the beginning of my career, in the 1980s and into the 1990s, I knew John Palmer. I'd 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
03:06the bank he headed straight back to Tenerife where he spotted a golden opportunity to put
03:12his fortune to work and this propelled him into the stratosphere of criminality oh I've got him
03:20there but big money leads to big enemies in Tenerife John Palmer was swimming in very dangerous waters
03:31and for him there was going to be no escape
03:36right John Palmer what I want us to do today is review the facts around the day that he was
04:04murdered the day died my own personal experience of Mickey McAvoy is that he's an extremely dangerous
04:19individual
04:22so
04:56When 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.
05:12He 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.
05:26So I'm coming up now to Harley's and the Flamingo Beach Bar,
05:52which was one of John Palmer's original restaurants, clubs.
05:58And this is where he operated from.
06:00This was the centre of John Palmer's power back in the day.
06:05Classic cars outside on the front.
06:08Then going down to Flamingo Beach Bar.
06:10And this was the investment.
06:11This was the power base.
06:13This is where the wealth was open and you could see it.
06:26After 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.
06:44John has always been seeing opportunities and going for them,
06:49making the most of everything he possibly could to get as much money as he can.
06:56Because that's what turns him on.
07:07I'm going to meet someone who was investigating John Palmer
07:10at the time that John was building his criminal empire on the island.
07:14I'm going to meet him on the island of the island of the island of the island of the island.
07:44I'm going to meet him on the island of the island of the island.
07:47I'm going to meet him on the island of the island of the island of the island of the island.
07:53When the Palmers arrived in the Tenerife, this snow...
07:57This is clear.
07:58Clear, clear.
07:59All clear.
08:01Wow.
08:03It's unusual.
08:05So why is this important to John Palmer's story?
08:07It's important to John Palmer because it's the first complex that he buys or buys once he arrives to the island of the island of the island.
08:14and after this apartment complex he found out that it was a business that left a lot of money
08:22and then he bought another series of complex to dedicate them to time sharing.
08:31He came with money and he realized that there was no mafia, there was no organized delinquency.
08:40His business was mainly dedicated to his compatriots, to the British.
08:47He brought people outside of Tenerife, he brought a lot of British young buyers.
08:54Well in 1991 I had hair, I was a lot slimmer and a lot fitter, loved having fun and loved earning money.
09:15I was 17 years old, I'd never been away from home before. It was my first job, I was so naive.
09:24It's living in the fast lane, Tenerife. You know, bars opened all night, nightclubs opened all night.
09:30There was a lot of drugs, there was a lot of alcohol. The strip, Veronica's, was a very, very popular place to go.
09:38You know, you had the best DJs, it was just wild and it was like a whole new way of life.
09:45When 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.
09:56Well 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.
10:08And that was their home and their property for that period of time there.
10:11Now in theory, timeshare isn't a bad idea. What happens is that for a lump sum, you buy the right
10:17to use an apartment or villa for particular weeks of the year. On top of that, you have to pay maintenance,
10:23but you do get the chance to swap your weeks for time in another apartment somewhere else in the world.
10:28Fine 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,
10:42just by paying one fixed fee.
10:44Started for a studio at three and a half grand, for one bed it was about five or six grand,
10:48two bed ten to twelve grand.
10:50By 52 weeks of the year times 200 apartments on each resort, it's a lot of money.
10:54Big money. It's massive money. In essence, what you're doing is you're selling the same damn thing 52 times.
11:04There's always going to be some trouble in there.
11:06Ah, well can I just say one thing off the record? I'm not here to invite you anywhere by the way. There you go.
11:11John Palmer's employees were schooled to use absolutely maximum high pressure sales techniques.
11:17It 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.
11:34We were the people on the streets who would give scratch cards to tourists.
11:39Basically, I would approach a couple on the street. You give the winning ticket to the woman and you give the losing ticket to the man. That's what I used to do.
11:50We could make up whatever we wanted. They could either go to the airport and collect their prize.
11:55We're about to the airport.
11:56Um, you'll see as you walk in there's a big sign. It says scratch your mouth. It's a huge great aluminum sign. You can't miss it.
12:01I used to say that there's a festival on the beachfront. You can get some free car hire. You can get a meal for four in Harley's restaurant. It was all a story. It was a story to get them stopped, to think that they would get a free prize, a free bottle of wine, a free drink.
12:16Oh, 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, I would get 50 pounds.
12:32In a south person, they would take them around the resort. And then they got the hard sell.
12:37A lot of the south people would say to them that, you know, don't worry if you change your mind, you can cancel when you get home in England. But you couldn't.
12:45The money is gone. The money's gone, yeah.
12:47Is it Palmer's pocket? That's right.
12:49Stories were emerging in Britain of people investing in the John Palmer type share scheme, finding they were seriously ripped off.
13:00It's on arrival at the complex that holiday makers say they're confronting the trouble.
13:06Many of them have found that unless they pay management costs in cash up front, which they've already paid to a firm in London, then they're not given their keys to their apartments.
13:17I got to realise that, in fact, this is a scam. So that's when I started to go back and say that we wanted out of the arrangement.
13:25They grabbed him, they hustled him out of the building, and they then sort of kicked him and got him down on the ground and they bounced his head on the pavement and on the road.
13:34The story that was emerging was that this was a business run by thugs and gangsters, that money was being almost extorted from ordinary working people.
13:48And that was saying to us that Palmer must have a lot of influence there because he didn't seem to be in fear of justice, in fear of law enforcement.
13:58I was in the apartment when I turned around and a man came through the door, took three paces towards me and commenced hitting me around the head with a baseball bat.
14:10Palmer moved in Tenerife from being a fraudster to becoming a real organised crime character.
14:24A real mafia don, if you like, in the Canary Islands.
14:30He surrounded himself with people who would go out and commit acts of violence without any questions asked on his behalf.
14:38The first time I realised that John Palmer had a lot of power was when he had a party one night.
14:46Lots of people showed up, lots of his friends were there.
14:49One of his friends got attacked by somebody drunk and John Palmer got the ump about that and he put out a contract on him.
14:56The fella left the island that night and then paid 50 grand to come back.
15:01And then when he came back he disappeared.
15:04A year later his car was still parked outside the party venue and it was covered in dust and dirt and everything.
15:10You heard about that?
15:11I heard about that numerous times, yeah.
15:14I did hear about people being murdered and but I just turned a blind eye to it all because it wasn't something that I was wanting to know about to be honest.
15:33So yeah, I'm not going to speak anymore about that I'm afraid.
15:40Even now?
15:41No.
15:49Palmer was seen as the mafia number one for two things.
15:54He had money, he had a lot of people at his service and two,
15:58He was a man who didn't shake his hand to order a fire of a car, a pill,
16:05and to give an exclamation to that person who didn't comply with what he believed he had to comply.
16:14That makes people fear.
16:18He came to control the island.
16:21He was the real love of the south of Tenerife.
16:28As his empire expanded, John Palmer's wealth went through the roof.
16:45He was earning so much, virtually a million pounds a week, that he couldn't invest it quick enough.
16:50Back into hotels, into port facilities, marinas, 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 what money he had or what money he didn't have.
17:12Just we didn't do it.
17:14I wasn't living over there.
17:17So Tenerife was totally separate from me.
17:21We had holidays on Concorde and we were doing everything that we wanted to do and we had the boat.
17:29He had the private jets because he was coming backwards and forwards to home anyway.
17:36Apart from everything, his business side of it.
17:40I mean, and it was leased. I mean, loads of people do that.
17:44From our perspective, John Palmer's lifestyle on Tenerife was that of a rock star.
17:51You know, he looked to be unstoppable.
17:53But when he appeared in the Sunday Times rich list, up there with the same amount of money as the Queen,
17:59it started to make the yard think that there had to be something in this that was criminal.
18:04We need to look even more closely at this man.
18:07How did he get to be this rich?
18:10My fate is up to you.
18:26Driving a buggy through the grounds of his Essex home, one of Britain's most notorious gangsters,
18:32John Goldfinger Palmer, and watching him in the garden, a contract killer who would later shoot him dead.
18:39I heard John Palmer was dead in a news bullet, and very shortly afterwards,
18:44people who knew I had an interest rung me to tell me that he had been assassinated.
18:51I did not feel sorry at all for his departure.
18:54I thought the world was rid of a really nasty piece of work.
18:59Well, 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 to buy plutonium to make a nuclear bomb.
19:32We had a very wide variety of subjects, like buying weapons-grade plutonium from the Russian Mafia.
19:37That was the hairiest one we ever did.
19:40Once we had the evidence, we would then organise to confront the malefactor.
19:44Hello, my name's Roger Cook from Central Television.
19:49And some of them, of course, turned violent.
19:51Leave him alone.
19:53During the course of it, I used to think it was like lion taming.
19:56If you showed fear, you'd had it.
19:58On Tenerife, John Palmer was a very powerful man, some people thought the most powerful.
20:11He used to boast he had the judiciary and the police force in his pocket and he could do anything he liked.
20:17If he didn't get his way by fair means, which he very rarely did, he'd do it by foul.
20:22Well, we had an editorial meeting in the Cook Report offices in Birmingham and one of the subject letters we wanted to investigate was money laundering.
20:30We spoke to a lot of people, lots of senior police officers, and the one name that kept coming up was John Palmer.
20:39Palmer very quickly got into money laundering because timeshare is an ideal way of doing it.
20:45He had a legitimate business and he manipulated it so that he was able to have millions of pounds going through the companies that he set up.
20:55He began to launder money for the Colombian cartels because he had a big cocaine habit himself.
21:01And it made him lots and lots of money.
21:04Actually, in the end, it made him more than timeshares.
21:06Our research showed that huge amounts of money, as much as 400 million, were being sifted through his many accounts.
21:18He was able to conceal the true origins of this money by laundering it through a vast web of international companies in a number of different offshore tax havens, almost impossible, in fact impossible to trace.
21:31We did a deal with the Metropolitan Police to investigate his money laundering activities while they concentrated on timeshare.
21:43It is unusual for the police to work in that way with a journalist.
21:48But, you know, you have to remember that Roger Cook at the time had a tremendous reputation.
21:54He had like 12 million viewers.
21:56His journalism was regarded as, you know, really being integrity based.
21:59And we were very happy that what he was going to do was a legitimate operation.
22:04We wanted to find a way of showing John Palmer as the unprincipled man he was.
22:09And we thought the best way to do that would be to get him to offer to launder money from drugs.
22:14The only way we could do that was find some realistic people to do the deal with him.
22:19General Kun Saar cuts open raw opium, which will be refined into heroin.
22:26Kun Saar was a warlord in Burma, who was the biggest heroin producer in the world at that time.
22:31As he produces 80% of the world's heroin, the potential profits for a money launderer would be staggering.
22:39So as a result of a program we had made earlier, when we wanted to get a couple of drug barons, we sent a message to him on a cleft stick and he said, of course you can.
22:48And set out two of his men who were the real article and John Palmer couldn't fault them because 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.
23:04This is with a special hook. We've finished all the other.
23:09Astonishingly, Palmer came himself, sitting cross-legged on the floor with 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, especially for the purpose of money laundering.
23:27Balanced ten million dollars. It's difficult for him to check money.
23:31Yeah.
23:32He's in Spain. Our banks are in offshore England.
23:35Yeah.
23:3690% is legitimate money.
23:38I watched the secret recordings more or less as live and I just couldn't stop grinning.
23:44He was digging a big, big hole, which is exactly what we wanted him to do.
23:49In the house we'd rented for Kunsa's men, Palmer put a price on his services.
23:54I think he'd probably be selling my 25%.
23:5725%?
23:58Because 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 realised 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.
24:18Yeah.
24:19This is clean room.
24:20Yeah.
24:21I need minimum six weeks.
24:23I can handle 50 million every six months.
24:25He was offering to launder vast quantities of drugs money and to top it all, he asked these drugs barons whether they could provide him with unidentifiable soldiers to act as enforcers for him.
24:39So, if I want something done, somebody making problems with me, big problems, you 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.
24:53I mean, we thought of every possible variation and we made it very convincing.
24:57So, Palmer actually turned up on his own.
25:00Mr. 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, you could tell on his face, as it dawned on him, that he'd been conned by the Cook report.
25:19I don't know what you're talking about.
25:20I'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.
25:29We have.
25:30We have the tape of it.
25:31Everything you've said has been recorded.
25:34Everything, including, including requests for enforcers.
25:41He denied all knowledge of any of these nefarious activities and then got into a taxi, which he'd hailed, and looking ridiculously smug.
25:49Which you knew it was.
25:50I wish I had it.
25:51You had.
25:53The 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.
26:07You were laundering money.
26:09You 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.
26:20Never heard of it.
26:21We've got it all on film.
26:22You're going to look amazingly stupid.
26:26As 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.
27:12Made him look a bit silly, really.
27:16What 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, 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.
28:15And 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.
28:25And I think a lot of criminals on the outside would have been thinking that he would do anything to mitigate that position.
28:32And I think he was extremely vulnerable at that point.
28:36Palmer 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.
28:49I'd been a police officer for 27 years.
28:52I'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?
29:06Why 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.
29:14Which outraged Palmer, who kept turning to the jury and saying, I'm not a gangster, I'm not a gangster.
29:20Well, I spoke to Palmer and asked him how he got on in court there.
29:24And he actually did tell me that he regretted that he didn't have counsel.
29:28Jesus, he could easily have thought 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, but 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. And 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.
31:07How come you and John never got divorced?
31:12Well, I did try, but he would just not sign the papers.
31:22So, and of course, he was in prison quite a bit.
31:28So, when John died, we were still husband and wife.
31:36As John said to me a long time after, when I said to him, what's happened to us?
31:41And he said it was all that Brink's Mark because it changed everything about us, about how we were.
31:52Do you miss those days?
31:54Yes, I do.
31:58So, Tony, what happened to Palmer's empire when he was in prison?
32:26When he was in prison.
32:28Well, well, the empire of John Palmer, without John Palmer being present in Tenerife, it doesn't work.
32:34He leaves his companies, his men of paja, his testaferros, who don't know how to manage the business as he was.
32:44And the business, obviously, he's not the same.
32:47Aparte, there was more competition.
32:49There was the man, who was his right hand, who also wanted a part of this tata, Mohamed Erbay.
32:55And there were a lot of Russians with money.
32:58You have to take into account that John Palmer left a lot of enemies behind.
33:03A lot of enemies and very powerful.
33:05So we're going to meet a really important man here in Tenerife, John Palmer's enforcer Mohamed Derbay.
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, never 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 and what the motive was.
34:01Hello, Mr. Derbay, I'm David.
34:13How are you? You OK? Good to see you.
34:15Thank you so much for meeting with me.
34:19Any help you need, I mean.
34:20That's brilliant.
34:21Because we're not doing the wrong thing, we're doing the right things.
34:23And people, if they understand that, they're supposed to do it to help you.
34:27What I want to do is ask you some questions about John's life.
34:30And potentially, you know, what led to John's death.
34:35Yeah, it's no problem.
34:37You know, it's whatever I can have about John's life.
34:40Because, you know, and everybody knows how I am close to John from the beginning and even before he died.
35:00What was that?
35:02Blimey.
35:03That was not what I expected.
35:05I mean, I've made notes, but Moe is without doubt the most powerful man on the island, no doubt about it.
35:20He told me the whole history of John and him.
35:21But what was important was that Moe and John were best mates at the end.
35:27And Moe was looking after John.
35:28And Moe was looking after John.
35:29John had lost his power on this island.
35:30And Moe was looking after him.
35:31And Moe was looking after him.
35:32And Moe was looking after the family as well.
35:33But it was incredible.
35:34I mean, he spoke about John's wealth and how John lost that wealth.
35:37Um, what happened throughout the period when John, um, what happened throughout the period when John,
35:42what was important was that Moe and John were best mates at the end.
35:47Uh, and Moe was looking after John.
35:48John had lost his power on this island.
35:50And Moe was looking after him.
35:51And Moe was looking after the family as well.
35:54But it was incredible.
35:57I mean, he spoke about John's wealth and how John lost that wealth.
36:02Um, what happened throughout the period when John,
36:06was in prison and how he looked after him in prison.
36:10But he said that John had got greedy.
36:13And that's, that's what happened towards the end.
36:15John had got greedy when he was buying up properties,
36:18but he was also borrowing money.
36:21And so that he was having to pay interest back on that money.
36:24And he said that John, towards the end of his life,
36:27his exact words, John just wanted peace.
36:30And he just wanted to get on with his life.
36:32He wanted to go fishing.
36:33He just wanted an easy life.
36:35He, the money had gone and he just wanted to get on with his life.
36:38The, the one thing that was quite clear is he says that if John had stayed in Tenerife,
36:44he would have been safe.
36:46He went back for that gallbladder operation.
36:49And that's what got him killed.
36:52If he'd have stayed in Tenerife, he would have had the protection of Mo and his people.
36:58Whereas John went back and that ultimately led to his death.
37:02So it was a, it was a mind blowing interview.
37:05And I'm going to have to sit down and seriously put all this together.
37:10Um, 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 corroboration for those leads.
37:21Mo portrayed Parma as charismatic but volatile, capable of both generosity and extreme violence.
37:36He, he recalled various violent episodes and criminal entanglements involving numerous people, uh, major crime families and organized crime from across the world, including the Italian Gomorrah.
38:01And also, uh, links to Russians, also vast scale money laundering all around the timeshare, but they were making eight to 10 million pounds a month making.
38:13He said that the cash flow issues presented by Parma's arrest led to Parma's downfall.
38:20The biggest opportunity that came out of his, he, he spoke about a man who he described as a British accountant that clearly Mo Durba didn't like.
38:30He called him a grass. And so I need to now track that person down.
38:36Back in the nineties, after serving time in prison for fraud, I decided to have a fresh start in Tenerife, away from the British police and set up a company, uh, dealing with high net worth.
38:54Advising them how to minimize their tax.
38:56Advising them how to minimize their tax.
38:57I had clients from all over Europe, including John Palmer's former right hand man, Mohamed Durba.
39:01And at that time, I realized that some of my clients were in fact mafia members or just gangsters.
39:08So I became an informant on behalf of the Spanish secret services.
39:15And so I became an informant on behalf of the Spanish secret services.
39:21So I gathered lots of information on all these individuals.
39:28So I've got a mountain of evidence.
39:35tape recordings, documents, documents, everything.
39:42And because of that information and intel, I know who killed John Palmer.
40:05Hello, Paul. How are you?
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 Palmer.
40:42So what's your involvement in all this?
40:44How did you get involved in it all?
40:45I'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.
40:54So that was when he was out of prison?
40:57Yes.
40:58Right.
40:59And I had a client who was worth 25 billion pounds.
41:02Million or billion?
41:03Billion.
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.
41:18Project Moscow was a development of a shopping complex in Moscow.
41:24And from looking at all the accounting records to do with that, I came across a Russian oligarch called Boris.
41:33Boris Berezovsky?
41:34Correct.
41:35Right.
41:36So where does John Palmer fit into all of this?
41:38John Palmer had some links to Boris because he was dealing with Boris.
41:43Do you know what sort of business?
41:46Property in Tenerife.
41:48So he was investing in property in Tenerife?
41:53He was, yes.
41:54Right.
41:55Okay.
41:56Back in the 90s, before prison, John Palmer decided to open an office in Moscow, selling timeshare, and that was very, very successful.
42:06But to do business in Russia at that time was you had to be in with the mafia, otherwise you didn't operate.
42:13And 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.
42:34Okay.
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 Palmer got killed.
42:51Right.
42:52Okay.
42:53Go on.
42:54Someone said that Palmer's jet was often seen at Moscow airport.
43:01Well, at that time, all the time, the jet there went to pick up the money cash.
43:08You said that it was one million pound a week coming in from Russia.
43:15The Russian mafia and the Russian people, they say, okay, give money make investment to take the money out.
43:22And they give them an apartment in like Omeri.
43:26So he was taking money from the Russian mafia to invest in timeshare and not deliver it?
43:44He don't have to deliver anything.
43:47In the secret filming that we did at the time, we had no prior knowledge about John Palmer's Russian connections
44:04until he started talking about it.
44:06it. This is a full transcript of one of our meetings with John Palmer, a lunch
44:12meeting, and he was very open about his business in Russia, doing
44:19business with the communists and ex-KGB agents, including the Russian mafia. We
44:27then started tracking his plane from Tenerife via Geneva, where he had bank
44:32accounts before he flew on to Russia. He told us during our secret filming that he
44:38had opened offices in Moscow, in St. Petersburg, where at that time Vladimir
44:45Putin was the deputy mayor of St. Petersburg and in charge of the external
44:49investment committee. There was a story about him inviting Gorbachev to Tenerife
44:57in two weeks time, he says here, to talk about timeshare. You know, it sounds as if
45:03he's exaggerated, but this actually happened. Gorbachev did go to the Canary
45:08Islands. It's extraordinary, really.
45:18JOHN PALMER WAS DOING REALLY WELL IN RUSSIA AND THEN HE GOT ARRESTED FOR THE
45:23TIME SHARE FRAUD. He can't touch his assets, he can't touch his money, and now
45:28Palmer is absolutely in debt up to his eyeballs. He's out of his league. This is
45:34not gangsterism in Tenerife. You're at a different level. Do you know how much debt
45:42Palmer was in? He's heavily in debt to the tune of a million pounds a week.
45:46Interest is. That's just interest. That's just interest. A million pounds a week.
45:51But now if we fast forward, John Palmer's out of prison, he can't pay his debt. That is
45:57when you become a liability. Exactly what happened to people who were involved in
46:03Project Moscow. The Russian Mafia have killed several people on British soil, all
46:10associated with Project Moscow. Inside his multi-million pound mansion,
46:17Varuzovsky was found dead in his bath by his bodyguard. He was murdered and it was made to
46:24look as if it was a suicide. Scott 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?
46:35Scott Young. They killed him also. All on the orders of the Russian Mafia.
46:41Suddenly you're putting all the pieces of the jigsaw together. You've got the Russian Mafia,
46:46you've got Project Moscow, you know, a series of deaths in the UK. You've got John Palmer,
46:54Varuzovsky's deaths. And they're all interconnected.
46:56Everything's connected. One way or another. Wow.
46:59Tell me what you think happened, how John was murdered. My trusted client told me the Russian
47:10Mafia, they put out the hit on John Palmer and assassins carried out the hit.
47:18So do you think that you're putting two and two together or is that something that you specifically
47:24were told? This is what they've been actually been told. Right. Yeah.
47:33It's an extraordinary theory, but it's very difficult for me to back up. If Paul is right,
47:39and John ripped off the Russian Mafia in a big way, their desire to kill him is plausible. But it
47:45doesn't prove anything. But it does open up the possibility of a line of inquiry. Russian OCGs are
47:53clearly capable of killing people on British soil, but they don't get their hands dirty. They employ
48:00professional hitmen to carry out the murders for them. It's happened in other cases and we've seen
48:06it. Hitmen and assassins coming into the country and then escaping. So if I can identify who pulled the
48:13trigger, I may be asked to establish who ordered the hit on John Palmer.
48:25They've been described as a murderous drug dealing cartel.
48:31What was he burning? Was that the motive for John Palmer's murder?
48:35They found all sorts of weird stuff. He was here to kill.
48:43You've got a professional assassin coming into the UK, into Essex, two weeks before
48:48the murder of John Palmer. This is dynamite.
49:02ondan thousands of friends were staring at me again.
49:11Yes, the one of them, I were aroundking the high need.
49:17Down.
49:19That is a scene where he, and I think people wanted to be the M Bondi.
49:21Thank you sure he's worshipped.
49:26Those, that were illegal to say,
49:28You
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