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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.
00:08But I've also defended a number of other high-profile cases worldwide, including the Iraqi regime, Milosevic, Gaddafi, Mugabe, Ian Brady.
00:19My latest client is President Bashar Assad. And it all kicked off thanks to John Goldfinger-Palmer's case.
00:26John Goldfinger-Palmer was and remained to the last day, in my view, a legitimate business entrepreneur.
00:35He was dyslexic, he had a problematic childhood, and he still made a success of his life.
00:42He was richer than the Queen, he sailed close to the wind, sometimes he went over the edge, and he paid a terrible price for it.
00:50But, you know, he was no gangster.
00:52I've never come across a more evil person than John Palmer.
00:58So we decided that we would show him up for what he was.
01:01Roger Cook, I'd like to talk to you about money laundering.
01:04About what?
01:05Money laundering.
01:06He was the biggest criminal in Britain at the time. You know, he seriously enjoyed hurting people, or having them hurt.
01:13We've got it all on film. You're going to look amazingly stupid.
01:18He had my address, he knew my movements, and he took out a contract on my life.
01:23John Palmer was not dangerous at all. He wasn't a gangster. That's what I do to Roger Cook.
01:30One of Britain's most notorious gangsters. Shot at close range. But who ordered John Palmer's murder? And why?
01:42You can run on for a long time. Run on for a long time. Run on for a long time.
01:52Soon our laser gotta cut you down. Soon our laser gotta cut you down.
01:58And again.
02:11At the beginning of my career in the 1980s, and into the 1990s, I knew John Palmer. I had written a lot about John Palmer.
02:20He was a big fish in the criminal underworld.
02:23john palmer was internationally famous as goldfinger he made a fortune out of fencing
02:36the brink smacked gold i'm completely innocent of this so-called matt's brink bullion ride i know
02:44nothing of it as the jury foreman spoke the words not guilty john palmer looked to the jury nodded
02:53and then blew them a kiss as he left the dock dodging jail left palmer a free man with millions
03:01in the bank he headed straight back to tenerife where he spotted a golden opportunity to put his
03:07fortune to work and this propelled him into the stratosphere of criminality oh i've got him here
03:15but big money leads to big enemies in tenerife john palmer was swimming in very dangerous waters
03:26and for him there was going to be no escape
03:42right john palmer what i want us to do today is review the facts around the day that he was
04:00murdered the day he died my own personal experience of mickey mcavoy is that he's an extremely
04:13dangerous individual
04:43When John Palmer first arrived on the island,
04:55it was nothing like it is today.
04:58People dreamed of owning property in the sun.
05:00The land here was cheap, so it was massive investment.
05:03And Palmer saw an opportunity and took advantage.
05:07He invested heavily in timeshare.
05:09So I want to go down to the centre of the main town.
05:15I want to go down and have a look, get a feel and understanding
05:18of what was going on at that time.
05:39I'm coming up now to Harley's and the Flamingo Beach Bar,
05:47which was one of John Palmer's original restaurants, clubs.
05:53And this is where he operated from.
05:55This was the centre of John Palmer's power back in the day.
06:00Classic cars outside on the front.
06:03Then going down to Flamingo's Beach Bar.
06:05This was the investment.
06:06This was the power base.
06:08This is where the wealth was open.
06:11And you could see it.
06:21After his acquittal,
06:24his plan was to go straight back to Tenerife
06:26and make something of himself.
06:30Being in Tenerife at the right time
06:33enabled him to build his empire.
06:38John has always been seeing opportunities
06:41and going for them,
06:44making the most of everything he possibly could
06:47to get as much money as he can,
06:51because that's what turns him on.
06:55I'm going to meet someone
07:03who was investigating John Palmer
07:05at the time that John was building
07:08his criminal empire on the island.
07:09He was getting the most of his life,
07:12and he and he was getting the most of him,
07:13but that's what it meant.
07:17Now we're going to the first complex
07:19we were here to the first complex
07:20that he bought Palmer.
07:23He bought this, the island village
07:23that had acquired many more.
07:29This is all on intelligence.
07:30When the parliament arrived in the Tenerife, this is not...
07:52It was just clear.
07:53Clear, clear, all clear.
07:55Wow.
07:56It's huge.
07:58So why is this important to John Palmer's story?
08:02It'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.
08:09And with this complex of apartment, he discovered that it was a business that left a lot of money
08:17and he bought another series of complex to dedicate them to time sharing.
08:23He came with money and he realized that there was no mafia, no delinquency organized.
08:35His business was mainly dedicated to his compatriotas, to the Britannians.
08:41He brought people from outside of Tenerife.
08:45He brought a lot of British entrepreneurs.
08:48His business was a business.
08:51And that had a battle to protect people.
09:03Well, in 1991 when I was here, I was a lot slimmer and a lot fitter.
09:07I loved having fun and um, loved earning money.
09:10earning money. I was 17 years old. I'd never been away from home before. It was my first
09:18job. I was so naive. It's living in the fast lane, Tenerife. You know, bars opened all
09:24night, nightclubs opened all night. There was a lot of drugs. There was a lot of alcohol.
09:29The Strip, Veronica's, was a very, very popular place to go. You know, you had the best DJs.
09:35It was just wild, and it was like a whole new way of life.
09:40When I first got to Tenerife, I realised that it was dominated by John Palmer and his timeshare
09:47industry. It was totally dominated by him out there.
09:51Well, his timeshare business, he built basically shallets. He built rooms, hotel rooms, luxurious
09:57ones, and people would be able to choose the weeks that they would go and stay on holiday.
10:02And that was their home and their property for that period of time there.
10:06Now, in theory, timeshare isn't a bad idea. What happens is that for a lump sum, you buy
10:11the right to use an apartment or villa for particular weeks of the year. On top of that, you have
10:17to pay maintenance, but you do get the chance to swap your weeks for time in another apartment
10:21somewhere else in the world. Fine if that's what you want.
10:25If I was a person who wanted to buy a timeshare, I would have a look around a resort, choose
10:30a timeshare that I would like, and then I'd buy one or two weeks out of the year for that
10:35apartment for the rest of your life, just by paying one fixed fee. Started for a studio
10:40at three and a half grand. For one bed, it was about five or six grand. Two bed, ten to
10:44twelve grand. By 52 weeks of the year times, two hundred apartments on each resort. It's
10:49a lot of money.
10:51Big money. It's massive money. In essence, what you're doing is you're selling the same
10:57damn thing 52 times. There's always going to be some trouble in there.
11:01John Palmer's employees were schooled to use absolutely maximum high pressure sales techniques.
11:12It was a bit like double glazing on speed, badgering tourists all day long on the seafronts at the
11:19various resorts in Tenerife.
11:21So an OPC is an outside personal contact.
11:26But the locals would call us overpaid cunts.
11:29We were the people on the streets who would give scratch cards to tourists. Basically, I
11:37would approach a couple on the street. You give the winning ticket to the woman and you
11:42give the losing ticket to the man. That's what I used to do. We could make up whatever we
11:46wanted. They could either go to the airport and collect their prize.
11:50They're about to the airport.
11:51You'll see, as you walk in, there's a big sign. It says, scratch your mouth. It's a huge,
11:55great, aluminum sign. You can't miss it.
11:56I used to say that there's a festival on the beachfront. You can get some free car hire.
12:01You can get a meal for four in Harley's restaurant. It was all a story. It was a story to get them
12:06stopped, to think that they would get a free prize, a free bottle of wine, a free drink.
12:11Oh, look, you've done it.
12:14The priority was to get the couple in a taxi, no matter what. And when you get them to the
12:20resort, if they agreed to look around the resort for 90 minutes, I would get £50.
12:27And the salesperson, they would take them around the resort. And then they got the hard sale.
12:32A lot of the salespeople would say to them that, you know, don't worry if you change your mind,
12:36you can cancel when you get home in England. But you couldn't.
12:40The money is gone?
12:41The money's gone, yeah.
12:42It's in Palmer's pocket.
12:43That's right.
12:47Stories were emerging in Britain of people investing in the John Palmer Typeshare scheme,
12:53finding they were seriously ripped off.
12:55It's on arrival at the complex that holidaymakers say they're confronting the trouble.
13:00Many of them have found that unless they pay management costs in cash up front, which they've
13:06already paid to a firm in London, then they're not given their keys to their apartments.
13:12I got to realise that, in fact, this is a scam. So that's when I started to go back
13:17and say that we wanted out of the arrangement.
13:19They grabbed him. They hustled him out of the building. And they then sort of kicked him
13:24and got him down on the ground and 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.
13:39That money was being almost extorted from ordinary working people.
13:43And that was saying to us that Palmer must have a lot of influence there
13:47because he didn't seem to be in fear of justice, in fear of law enforcement.
13:54I was in the apartment when I turned around and a man came through the door,
14:01took three paces towards me and came and sitting me around the head with a baseball bat.
14:13Palmer moved in Tenerife from being a fraudster to becoming a real organised crime character.
14:20A real mafia don, if you like, in the Canary Islands.
14:25He surrounded himself with people who would go out and commit acts of violence
14:30without any questions asked on his behalf.
14:33The first time I realised that John Palmer had a lot of power was when he had a party one night.
14:41Lots of people showed up. Lots of his friends were there.
14:44One of his friends got attacked by somebody drunk.
14:47And John Palmer got the ump about that and he put out a contract on him.
14:51The fella left the island that night and then paid 50 grand to come back.
14:56And then when he came back, he disappeared.
14:59A year later, his car was still parked outside the party venue
15:02and it was covered in dust and dirt and everything.
15:04You heard about that?
15:06I heard about that numerous times, yeah.
15:08I did hear about people being murdered, but I just turned a blind eye to it all
15:21because it wasn't something that I was wanting to know about, to be honest.
15:27So, yeah, not going to speak any more about that, I'm afraid.
15:31Even now?
15:35No.
15:36Palmer era visto como el mafioso número uno por dos cosas.
15:49Tenía dinero, tenía mucha gente a su servicio y dos.
15:53Era un hombre al que no le temblaba la mano para ordenar una quema de un coche, una paliza,
16:00y dar un escarmiento a aquella persona que no cumplía con lo que él creía que tenía que cumplir.
16:09Eso hace que la gente tenga miedo.
16:13Llegó a ver, llegó a controlar la isla.
16:16Él era el amo realmente del sur de Tenerife.
16:21I know I'd go from rags to riches.
16:36As his empire expanded, John Palmer's wealth went through the roof.
16:40He was earning so much, virtually a million pounds a week, that he couldn't invest it quick enough,
16:45back into hotels, into port facilities, marinas, into villas.
16:50This was a top gangster at the top of his form.
16:53My clothes may still be torn and tattered
17:02Him and I never actually talked about what money he had or what money he didn't have.
17:07Just we didn't do it.
17:10I wasn't living over there.
17:13So Tenerife was totally separate from me.
17:16We had holidays on Concord and we were doing everything that we wanted to do and we had the boat.
17:24He had the private jets because he was coming backwards and forwards to home anyway.
17:31Apart from everything, his business side of it, I mean, and it was least, I mean, loads of people do that.
17:39From our perspective, John Palmer's lifestyle on Tenerife was that of a rock star.
17:46You know, he looked to be unstoppable.
17:48But when he appeared in the Sunday Times rich list, up there with the same amount of money as the Queen,
17:54it started to make the yard think that there had to be something in this that was criminal.
17:59We need to look even more closely at this man.
18:02How did he get to be this rich?
18:05My fate is up to you.
18:21Driving a buggy through the grounds of his Essex home, one of Britain's most notorious gangsters,
18:27John Goldfinger Palmer, and watching him in the garden, a contract killer who would later shoot him dead.
18:34I heard John Palmer was dead in a news bullet.
18:38And very shortly afterwards, people who knew I had an interest rung me to tell me that he had been assassinated.
18:46I did not feel sorry at all for his departure.
18:48I thought the world was rid of a really nasty piece of work.
18:54Well, I've had an interest in John Palmer for a very long time.
18:57The man was evil, pure evil, I think.
19:01So we decided that we would show him up for what he was.
19:09The Cook Report was a very, very popular investigative programme.
19:15It tackled all sorts of subjects.
19:19We're in Red Square and on our way to a secret meeting to buy plutonium to make a nuclear bomb.
19:27We had a very wide variety of subjects, like buying weapons-grade plutonium from the Russian Mafia.
19:33That was the hairiest one we ever did.
19:35Once we had the evidence, we would then organise to confront the malefactor.
19:40Hello, my name's Roger Cook from Central Television.
19:43And some of them, of course, turned violent.
19:45Leave him alone.
19:46Where the f***ing yards?
19:47During the course of it, I used to think it was like lion taming.
19:51If you showed fear, you'd had it.
19:59On Tenerife, John Palmer was a very powerful man.
20:03Some people thought the most powerful.
20:05He used to boast he had the judiciary and the police force in his pocket.
20:09And he could do anything he liked.
20:11If he didn't get his way by fair means, which he very rarely did, he'd do it by foul.
20:17Well, we had an editorial meeting in the Cook Report offices in Birmingham.
20:22And one of the subject letters we wanted to investigate was money laundering.
20:25We spoke to a lot of people, lots of senior police officers.
20:29And the one name that kept coming up was John Palmer.
20:34Palmer very quickly got into money laundering because timeshare is an ideal way of doing it.
20:40He had a legitimate business and he manipulated it
20:44so that he was able to have millions of pounds going through the companies that he set up.
20:50He began to launder money for the Colombian cartels
20:54because he had a big cocaine habit himself.
20:56And it made him lots and lots of money.
20:58Actually, in the end, it made him more than timeshares.
21:01Our research showed that huge amounts of money,
21:05as much as 400 million were being sifted through his many accounts.
21:13He was able to conceal the true origins of this money
21:16by laundering it through a vast web of international companies
21:20in a number of different offshore tax havens, almost impossible, in fact impossible to trace.
21:26We did a deal with the metropolitan police to investigate his money laundering activities
21:35while they concentrated on timeshare.
21:38It is unusual for the police to work in that way with a journalist.
21:43But, you know, you have to remember that Roger Cook at the time had a tremendous reputation.
21:48He had like 12 million viewers.
21:50His journalism was regarded as, you know, really being integrity-based.
21:55And we were very happy that what he was going to do was a legitimate operation.
21:58We wanted to find a way of showing John Palmer as the unprincipled man he was.
22:03And we thought the best way to do that would be to get him to offer to launder money from drugs.
22:09The only way we could do that was find some realistic people to do the deal with him.
22:14General Kun Saar cuts open raw opium, which will be refined into heroin.
22:21Kun Saar was a warlord in Verma, who was the biggest heroin producer in the world at that time.
22:27As he produces 80% of the world's heroin, the potential profits for a money launderer would be staggering.
22:34So as a result of a programme we had made earlier, when we wanted to get a couple of drug barons,
22:39we sent a message to him on a cleft stick and he said, of course you can,
22:43and sent out two of his men who were the real article.
22:46And John Palmer couldn't fault them because they were the real article.
22:50So we thought he'd go for something that big.
22:55First, the Burmese wanted Happy Snaps to take home.
22:59This is with a special hook.
23:02Astonishingly, Palmer came himself, sitting cross-legged on the floor with the Burmese, eating a Thai meal.
23:11That was when we knew we had him hooked completely.
23:16He told Saan Porn that he kept at least one bank account, especially for the purpose of money laundering.
23:22A balance of $10 million. It's difficult for him to check.
23:25Yeah.
23:26Our business is in Spain. Our banks are in offshore England.
23:30Yeah.
23:3190% is legitimate money.
23:33I watched the secret recordings more or less as live, and I just couldn't stop grinning.
23:39He was digging a big, big hole, which is exactly what we wanted him to do.
23:43In the house we'd rented for Kunsa's men, Palmer put a price on his services.
23:48I think it'd probably be something like 25%.
23:5125%?
23:52Because I have to do it properly.
23:55This is a meeting in the Muse house that we rented.
23:59I'm not cheap, but I'm good.
24:01Oh, yeah.
24:02He soon began to relax and realized that he was going to do some serious business in Southeast Asia.
24:09If you give me a million dollars, I'll take a million from my bank.
24:13Yeah.
24:14This is clean room.
24:15Yeah.
24:16Minimum six weeks, I can handle 50 million every six months.
24:20He was offering to launder vast quantities of drugs money.
24:25And to top it all, he asked these drugs barons whether they could provide him with unidentifiable soldiers to act as enforcers for him.
24:34So if I want something done, somebody making problems with me, big problems, you can give me some soldier from you, some men.
24:43Yeah.
24:44Yeah?
24:45No problem.
24:46No problem.
24:47He told me, none of that was ridiculously planned.
24:48I mean, we thought of every possible variation.
24:50And we made it very convincing.
24:51So Power actually turned up on his own.
24:54Mr Power.
24:56Roger Cook.
24:57Mr Power, Roger Cook, I'd like to talk to you about money laundering.
25:03About what?
25:04Money laundering. We've been listening to every conversation you've had with George...
25:07He was so shocked, you could tell on his face, as it dawned on him,
25:11that he'd been conned by the Cook report.
25:14I don't know what you're talking about.
25:16We've recorded every one of the conversations you've had with the representative Khun Saar.
25:19We've just heard you offering to launder money.
25:22We've heard you offering to launder at least three million.
25:24We have. We have the tape of it.
25:26Everything you've said has been recorded.
25:29Everything, including requests for enforcers.
25:36He denied all knowledge of any of these nefarious activities
25:39and then got into a taxi which he'd hailed and looking ridiculously smug.
25:44Which you knew it was.
25:45I wish I had it.
25:46You had.
25:48The taxi starts to move away, but as luck would have it, the lights turned red.
25:54Roger went in again and opened the door and started talking to him.
25:57Just extraordinary.
25:59So, tell us more about the laundering.
26:03You were laundering money.
26:04You were offering to launder 60 billion dollars a year from what you knew was drugs money.
26:11The people you've been talking with come from Khun Saar.
26:15Never heard of it.
26:15I don't know who to do that.
26:16We've got it all on film.
26:18You're going to look amazingly stupid.
26:21As 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.
26:35The 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.
26:51So, he got so angry, he flung his phone out of the open window.
26:54It was just amazing.
26:57What did John say about Roger Cook?
27:00Well, as usual, he said he was tricked into it.
27:10Made him look a bit silly, really.
27:15What 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.
27:30Scotland 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.
27:50This was what I call payback for being acquitted in Brinks-Math.
27:54The state were out to get John Palmer.
27:58One way or to the other, by hook or by crook, they were going to get him.
28:05John Palmer turned up at the Old Bailey wearing a bulletproof vest, saying that he was a target, and he wore it throughout the trial.
28:12The threat against John Palmer was huge.
28:16You know, he was facing a trial which could have earned him 14 years in prison.
28:21And I think a lot of criminals on the outside would have been thinking that he would do anything to mitigate that position.
28:27And I think he was extremely vulnerable at that point.
28:31Palmer was charged with conning 16,500 timeshare customers out of £30 million.
28:38The difference with John Palmer's trial was he decided to defend himself.
28:45I'd been a police officer for 27 years.
28:47I'd never been cross-examined by a defendant acting on their own behalf.
28:53He thought he knew best, as John Palmer always did.
28:56John Palmer asked me, you know, why were we following him?
29:01Why were we spending all this money on him, as it were?
29:05And I told him that it was because we believed he was a serious and organised criminal.
29:09Which outraged Palmer, who kept turning to the jury and saying, I'm not a gangster, I'm not a gangster.
29:15Well, I spoke to Palmer and asked him how he got on in court there.
29:19And he actually did tell me that he regretted that he didn't have counsel.
29:23Jesus, he could easily have afforded it. He was one of the richest people in the UK.
29:28A massive mistake.
29:30During a long trial, he told the jury there had been a fraud,
29:33but that was done by others who were running the company for him.
29:37Palmer claimed that he was let down by people he worked with.
29:40That's complete rubbish. He controlled the whole thing.
29:42Nothing happened in his organisation without his direct involvement.
29:47He orchestrated absolutely everything.
29:50And if you didn't do it his way, you got seriously hurt.
29:53A wealthy businessman has been found guilty of swindling £30 million from holidaymakers in a timeshare fraud.
30:0151-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,
30:17but the transport had changed rather as Britain's wealthiest villain was driven off to prison.
30:22I think the reality of John Palmer's life following the conviction was very different.
30:29He was going to prison for quite a long time.
30:31He was not in financial control of his businesses in Tenerife.
30:37He was in a very difficult and vulnerable position.
30:39When he was in prison, he clearly lost a lot of his cachet, a lot of his reputation.
30:46People didn't want to be associated with a man who was so publicly humiliated and was such a public target.
30:53And if 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.
31:05How come you and John never got divorced?
31:07Well, I did try, but he just, he would just not sign the papers.
31:17So, and of course, he was in prison quite a bit.
31:23So, when John died, we were still husband and wife.
31:28As John said to me a long time after, when I said to him, what's happened to us?
31:36And he said, it was all the Brinks map because it changed everything about us, about how we were.
31:47Do you miss those days?
31:51Yes, I do.
31:52So, Tony, what happened to Palmer's empire when he was in prison?
32:22Well, well, the empire of John Palmer, without John Palmer being present in Tenerife, it doesn't work.
32:28He leaves a cargo of his companies, his men of paja, his testaferros, who don't know how to manage the business as he was.
32:39And the business, evidently, he was not the same.
32:42Aparte, there was more competition.
32:43There was the man who was his right hand, who also wanted a part of this tartar, Mohammed Erdogan.
32:50And there was a lot of russians with money.
32:52You have to take into account that John Palmer left a lot of enemy behind, a lot of enemy and very powerful.
32:59So, we're going to meet a really important man here in Tenerife, John Palmer's enforcer, Mohammed Durba.
33:12At one stage, he was Palmer's right hand man.
33:28Then they became bitter enemies and a power struggle on the island.
33:33He seems to have taken over here when Palmer was jailed.
33:37This is a man alleged to have been involved with intimidation, violence, never been prosecuted and convicted.
33:45So, we're on our way now to meet him at his business premises and 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.
33:56Hello, Mr Durba and David.
34:03You all right?
34:04You okay?
34:05Good to see you.
34:06Come here.
34:07Thank you so much for meeting with me.
34:09Any help you need, I mean.
34:10That's brilliant.
34:11Because you're not doing the wrong thing, you're doing the right things.
34:13Brilliant.
34:14And people, if they understand that, they're supposed to do it to help you.
34:17What I want to do is ask you some questions about John's life and potentially, you know, what led to John's death.
34:30Yeah, it's no problem.
34:31It's just, you know, it's whatever I can have about John's life because, you know, and everybody knows how I am close to John from the beginning and even before he died.
34:40Yeah.
35:10What was that?
35:14Blimey, that was not what I expected.
35:18I mean, I've made notes, but Moe is without doubt the most powerful man on the island, no doubt about it.
35:28He told me the whole history of John and him, but what was important was that Moe and John were best mates at the end.
35:40And Moe was looking after John. John had lost his power on this island, and Moe was looking after him, and Moe was looking after the family as well.
35:49But it was incredible. I mean, he spoke about John's wealth and how John lost that wealth.
35:58What happened throughout the period when John was in prison and how he looked after him in prison.
36:05But he said that John had got greedy, and that's what had happened towards the end.
36:11John had got greedy when he was buying up properties, but he was also borrowing money.
36:17And so he was having to pay interest back on that money.
36:19And he said that John, towards the end of his life, his exact words, John just wanted peace.
36:25And he just wanted to get on with his life. He wanted to go fishing. He just wanted an easy life.
36:30The money had gone, and he just wanted to get on with his life.
36:34The one thing that was quite clear is he says that if John had stayed in Tenerife, he would have been safe.
36:41He went back for that gallbladder operation, and that's what got him killed.
36:47If he'd have stayed in Tenerife, he would have had the protection of Mo and his people, whereas John went back, and that ultimately led to his death.
36:57So it was a mind-blowing interview, and I'm going to have to sit down and seriously put all this together,
37:05because there was so much there, and 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.
37:17The, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the.
37:37Mo portrayed Palma as charismatic, but volatile, capable of both generosity and extreme violence.
37:43He recalled various violent episodes and criminal entanglements
37:48involving numerous people, major crime families
37:52and organised crime from across the world,
37:55including the Italian Gomorrah, and also links to Russians.
38:00Also, vast-scale money laundering all around the timeshare.
38:04But they were making £8 million to £10 million a month.
38:07Making.
38:09He said that the cash flow issues presented by Palmer's arrest
38:13led to Palmer's downfall.
38:16The biggest opportunity that came out of it is he spoke about a man
38:20who he described as a British accountant
38:23that clearly Mo Durba didn't like.
38:26He called him a grass.
38:27And so I need to now track that person down.
38:38Back in the 90s, after serving time in prison for fraud,
38:52I decided to have a fresh start in Tenerife,
38:56away from the British police,
38:57and set up a company dealing with high-net-worth individuals,
39:02advising them how to minimise their tax.
39:05I had clients from all over Europe,
39:12including John Palmer's former right-hand man,
39:15Mohamed Durba.
39:17And at that time, I realised that some of my clients
39:21were in fact mafia members or just gangsters.
39:28So I became an informant on behalf of the Spanish Secret Services.
39:32So I gathered lots of information on all these individuals.
39:42So I've got a mountain of evidence.
39:46Tape recordings.
39:50Documents.
39:53Everything.
39:53And because of that information and intel,
39:58I know who killed John Palmer.
40:00Hello, Paul.
40:25How are you?
40:27I'm David.
40:28Pleased to meet you.
40:29And you.
40:30Good to meet you.
40:32Paul, I've come up to see you.
40:35Yes.
40:35About the murder of John Palmer.
40:38So what's your involvement in all this?
40:39How did you get involved in it all?
40:41I'm an offshore financial consultant.
40:43Right.
40:44I was working in Spain.
40:46What part of John's life was this?
40:48This was late 2000s.
40:50So that was when he was out of prison?
40:52Yes.
40:53Right.
40:53And I had a client who was worth 25 billion pounds.
40:58Million or billion?
40:59Billion.
40:59Billion?
41:00Billion.
41:00Billion.
41:01And he was involved in a property deal in Moscow called Project Moscow.
41:06Right.
41:07Which my client had invested in.
41:10Project Moscow was a development of a shopping complex in Moscow.
41:20And from looking at all the accounting records to do with that, I came across a Russian oligarch called Boris.
41:28Boris Berezovsky?
41:29Correct.
41:29Right.
41:31So where does John Palmer fit into all of this?
41:33John Palmer had some links to Boris because he was dealing with Boris.
41:40Do you know what sort of business?
41:42Property in Tenerife.
41:45So he was investing in property in Tenerife?
41:49He was, yes.
41:49Right.
41:50Back in the 90s, before prison, John Palmer decided to open an office in Moscow, selling Timeshare.
41:59And that was very, very successful.
42:02But to do business in Russia at that time was you had to be in with the mafia, otherwise you didn't operate.
42:09And once he's in business with them, he's got access to funds, borrowed funds from them.
42:16So now he's borrowing monies as well.
42:18Wow.
42:19And this is a lot of money borrowed from a lot of highly dangerous people in Russia.
42:29Okay.
42:30So how do you back up, you know, what you've said to us today?
42:33I have tape recordings.
42:34Right.
42:35And this is a recording of a colleague of mine interviewing Mohamed Derva.
42:40This recording for me demonstrates just why John Palmer got killed.
42:46Right.
42:46Okay, go on.
42:49Someone said that Palmer's jet was often seen at Moscow airport.
42:57Well, at that time, all the time the jet there went to pick up the money cash.
43:01You said that there was one million pound a week coming in from Russia.
43:09The Russian mafia and the Russian people, they said, okay, give money, make investment to take the money out.
43:17And they give them an apartment in Lagomere.
43:20So he was taking money from the Russian mafia to invest in timeshare and not delivering?
43:39They said, okay, wow.
43:40And they don't have to deliver anything.
43:44in the secret filming that we did at the time we had no prior knowledge about john palmer's
43:58russian connections until he started talking about it this is a full transcript of one of
44:06our meetings with john palmer a lunch meeting and he was he was very open about his business
44:13in russia doing business with the communists and ex-kgb agents including the russian mafia
44:20we then started tracking his plane from tenerife via geneva where he had bank accounts before he
44:28flew on to russia he told us during our secret filming that he had opened offices in moscow in
44:36st petersburg where at that time vladimir putin was the deputy mayor of st petersburg and in
44:43charge of the external investment committee there was a story about him inviting gorbachev to
44:51tenerife in two weeks time he says here to talk about timeshare you know it sounds as if he's
44:59exaggerating but this actually happened gorbachev did go to the canary islands it's it's it's extraordinary
45:05really john palmer was doing really well in russia and then he got arrested for the timeshare fraud
45:19right he can't touch his assets he can't touch his money and now palmer is absolutely in debt up to his
45:27his eyeballs he's out of his league this is not gangsterism in tenerife you're at a different
45:34level do you know how much debt palmer was in he's heavily in debt to the tune of a million pounds a
45:41week interest is that's just interest just interest a million pounds a week but now if we fast forward
45:48john palmer's out of prison he can't pay his debt that is when you become a liability exactly what
45:56happened to people who were involved in project moscow the russian mafia have killed several people on
46:04british soil all associated with project moscow inside his multi-million pound mansion
46:12verasovsky was found dead in his bath by his bodyguard he was murdered and it was made to look
46:19as if it was a suicide scott young's body was found in montague square on monday evening did he fall
46:26onto these railings in london from the building above or was he pushed scott young they killed him also
46:33all on the orders of the russian mafia suddenly you're putting all the pieces of the jigsaw together
46:39you've got the russian mafia you've got project moscow you know a series of deaths in the uk
46:46you've got john palmer vast debts and they're all interconnected everything's connected one way or
46:53another wow tell me what you think happened how john was murdered my trusted client told me the russian
47:05mafia they put out the hit on john palmer and assassins carried out the hit
47:13so do you think that you're putting two and two together or is that something that you specifically
47:19were told this is what they've been actually been told right yeah
47:22it's an extraordinary theory but it's very difficult for me to back up if paul is right
47:34and john ripped off the russian mafia in a big way their desire to kill him is plausible but it doesn't
47:40prove anything but it does open up the possibility of a line of inquiry russian ocgs are clearly capable of
47:50killing people on british soil but they don't get their hands dirty they employ professional hitmen
47:56to carry out the murders for them it's happened in other cases and we've seen it hitmen and assassins
48:02coming into the country and then escaping so if i can identify who pulled the trigger i may be able to
48:10establish who ordered the hit on john palmer
48:20they've been described as a murderous drug dealing cartel
48:26what was he burning was that the motive for john palmer's murder
48:30they found all sorts of weird stuff he was here to kill you've got a professional assassin coming
48:40into the uk into essex two weeks before the murder of john palmer this is dynamite
48:58is
49:21um
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