Curtis Warren is due for release this year and according to prosecutors could still have nearly £200million stashed in a murky network of hidden assets.
When Liverpool's most infamous gangster walks out of prison, reportedly in November, he will have spent the last 14 years behind bars. One of the intriguing questions around the case of the man known as 'Cocky' is what became of the supposedly astronomical profits of the drugs trafficking trade he dominated.
Whether Warren could access those riches upon his release is far from clear. He will be under close scrutiny as per the terms of a Serious Crime Prevention Order (SCPO) obtained by the National Crime Agency (NCA), which monitors and restricts his ability to hold assets at home or abroad.
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Back in 2013, Warren was fighting the authorities in Jersey over an attempt to confiscate his drugs profits, following his conviction in 2009 for attempting to smuggle cannabis worth £1million onto the island. His scheme was rumbled in July 2007, only five weeks after his release from a Dutch prison where he had been serving time since 1996 over a £125million drugs trafficking plot.
The stakes were high. If Warren was able to rebuff the suggestion he had millions squirrelled away, he could have been released a short time later on licence. However if the state proved its case, Warren would be ordered to satisfy a gargantuan confiscation order or spend another decade in prison.
Money laundering machine
In Jersey's Royal Court in St. Helier, the state's then Attorney General, Howard Sharp, QC, set out an astonishing description of the drug lord's money laundering machine. The court heard Swiss bank accounts, a Turkish property scheme and a gold mining venture in Guyana were suspected to be part of his network.
Mr Sharp said one underworld contact referred to the drugs baron as “Calvin Klein” because his name was so famous. He told the court "truly prolific" Warren could source cocaine from South America, heroin from Turkey and Iran, and cannabis from Morocco.
Warren was even described as boasting while in a Dutch prison of how he laundered £15million in cash each week. The court heard his markets are “diverse” and include Liverpool, Brazil, Moscow, Swaziland and Australia.
Mr Sharp said back in 1996, Dutch financial investigators estimated Warren made a drugs profit of £12million in a three-month period, but those figures failed to take into account multi-million pound heroin and cannabis jobs, or cocaine trafficking.
The same investigation also did not consider alleged overseas trade, including deals to sell 3,000 “bath interiors” to Moscow and “railways” to South Africa. Mr Sharp said: “We are not suggesting for a moment they [Warren’s gang] were selling bathroom suites.”
Mr Sharp said Warren had made 35,000 calls from behind bars while awaiting trial in Jersey to contacts across the world. After a painstaking financial investigation, Mr Sharp said the state's investigators had arrived at a total figure of £197million, adjusted for inflation.
"I nfluence in every corner of the globe.”
Warren used seven illicit mobile phones in Jersey’s La Moye prison, which Mr Sharp claimed showed direct evidence of Warren “trading from prison”. The Attorney General produced an A3 map to the court marking in blue the countries involved in calls to and from the seven phones and in green the locations of people stored in the contacts book.
Mr Sharp said: "Between March 2008 and October 2009 the mobile telephones were used in prison to make some 34,000 telephone calls and texts, on average about 62 calls were taking place a day.
"Almost all the contact was routed though the mast at HMP La Moye. You can see whoever was using those phones was calling people in the North West of England, particularly Liverpool and Manchester.
"We can see that there was contact to telephone kiosks in the Liverpool area." The court heard 36 contacts on the phones were said to be known associates of Warren.
Mr Sharp added: “It is very clear that Mr Warren was using these phones and they were in operation from La Moye during his period on remand.” The court heard how contact was made with people in countries with “significant” links to drug dealing
Outlining some of the countries involved in the calls, Mr Sharp said: “Iran has well-known links to heroin. Morocco is a source of cannabis. Note the calls to South and Central America, a source for cocaine.
“Ghana is well-known for distributing cocaine into Europe. Thailand for heroin to Australia. Swaziland also received a call or two from these telephones and in 1996 you will recall Warren was sending a man to Swaziland.”
Other countries contacted by phones attributed to Warren include China, India, Bhutan, Bangladesh, New Zealand, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Burkina Faso, Bolivia, Greece, Bulgaria, Germany, Poland and Hungary. Contacts on his phone were linked to Russia, Serbia, Montenegro, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Sweden, Venezuela, Colombia and Argentina.
Mr Sharp continued: “The fact is he has continued to have influence and his ability to communicate around the world remains, we say, undiminished. The map tells its own story. Warren is an international drug dealer.
"He had contacts and influence in every corner of the globe.”
Evidence from the wire
He reminded the court over Warren's Dutch conviction, based on one of several suspected cocaine importation plots from Venezuela, where 307kg of the Class A drug was shipped to Holland, concealed in lead ingots.
The sum also includes £11.7million adjusted to £19.73million with inflation, said to have passed through a Bureau de Change in London where it was claimed Warren’s cronies would go to launder drugs cash into Deutschmarks, Dutch guilders and Swiss francs.
Warren's legal team claimed he was "penniless" and that allegations of hidden fortunes were “ridiculous“. However Mr Sharp told the six jurats, judges of fact who determined the case: “When you take a step back and look at this case overall, we will be considering incredibly large chunks of cash that are crying out for an explanation as to their current whereabouts.
“Whether a relevant and substantive explanation from Warren will be forthcoming during this hearing remains to be seen.”
The Jersey investigators’ case against Warren was partly based on Dutch intercepts of four months of phone calls involving Warren in the Netherlands, from after he moved to Sassenheim in the mid-1990s, in a bid to avoid escalating and deadly gang wars in Liverpool.
Mr Sharp described covert surveillance where Warren told a woman how his money and investments were “safe” in the event of his arrest. He said Warren had purchased a string of properties in Turkey in 1996 – properties which have never been traced by authorities.
They were said to include a petrol station which Warren was anticipating making £20,000 a month from.
The court also heard the wiretap recorded evidence that Warren was involved in a £4million gold mining venture in Guyana, which would return “big money”, as well as conversations about a Dutch pallet business where Warren wanted paying into a Swiss bank account.
"Bragging and foolish talk"
Mr Sharp said: “Warren was not burning his cash as his went along. He wanted a return on what he had earned. One of the reasons why Warren’s assets have remained hidden is that he is good at concealing ownership.” He added: “The stark fact is that Warren had ways of laundering his assets in ways that are simply untraceable.”
The prosecution opened their case against Warren by playing covert recordings obtained in a Dutch prison in 2004 with a drug dealing contact. The former Interpol target one was discussing a money launderer who gave him a cheap 1% commission.
On the tape, Warren suggests that he would "sometimes" launder £10m-£15m in cash in a week. Mr Sharp told the court: "The prosecution case is that Warren used the 1% laundering service on at least 10 occasions. That is to say Warren laundered £10million on 10 occasions from 1991 to 1996.
"Allowing for RPI (retail price index) as of autumn 2013, that figure is adjusted to £178.78million. The Crown's case is that the TEB (the bureau de change allegedly used by Warren and his gang) provides a further benefit of £11.7million, adjusted for RPI to £19.73million. The total benefit is £198.51million."
In Warren's defence, advocate Stephen Baker, labelled the Dutch prison recording "tittle-tattle, bragging and foolish talk". He claimed all the money made from his life of crime had been handed over in earlier confiscation proceedings by the Dutch authorities.
However the jurats sided with the Attorney General's office and Warren was ordered to pay in full.
Payment never arrived, and Warren has served his time in default of that sum. But with the threat of even more lost years in jail hanging over his head and specialist detectives ready to pounce at the slightest hint of suspicion, trying to recoup those missing millions could be too reckless even for the man known as 'Cocky'.
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