Read The Iceman: The Rise and Fall of a Crime Lord Online
Authors: Jim Wilson
The Iceman: The Rise and Fall of a Crime Lord (34 page)
Asked if corruption had taken deep root in Scotland, Pearson is unable to answer, saying, ‘I don’t know is the true answer. I’d like to think there is very little. I think it’s parochial enough that we’d get to know about it.’
Pearson believes the financial isolation of organised criminals is the key to putting them out of business. He said:
They need these advisers to help them to clean their money – they can’t do it themselves. We need to break into a couple of these. I’d like to create a sea around an island of organised crime. They might have
£1
million but they can’t spend it and then we come and take it from them.
The international contacts built by Stevenson stretched across the world and Pearson believes some of the challenges faced by the Folklore team will become commonplace because of the globalisation of crime. He commented:
It was surprising how efficient his international contacts were and how easily they were made. You have to remember that they operate at an advantage. They can just get up, buy a bucket seat for £20 and, three hours later, they’re in mainland Europe, hiring a car, driving to another country and doing their business.
It’s not just getting officers on the plane, driving after them, tracking their phones. It’s quickly getting to the people in foreign jurisdictions who can authorise that and supply assistance if required. These guys don’t have to phone ahead to get authorisation to go to a country and commit crime. They jump on a plane and take off . . .
Folklore touched three continents – the Americas, Europe and Africa – but it can take weeks, even months, to find a way into another criminal jurisdiction. The problem is getting law enforcement agencies to co-operate with each other. Historically, we have always viewed ourselves as nation states with distinct borders but that is not how these guys see the world. They do not see a map with boundaries and borders. They see the world as a bus route and they get on and off the bus where they like. They get off, do business and get back on.
International crime groups commit crime in Scotland but we’re not really on the beaten track for that. Places like Scotland become interesting if we make it easy. Organised crime will weigh up the risks in doing business here and, when they see that we seize assets and jail them and do so quickly, that should put them off coming here.
Increasingly it will become a world community. We’re going to find it very difficult to see each other in the tribal ways that we did. Criminals gangs are co-operating a great deal more in pursuit of their interests. We want to make life very difficult so they think, ‘To hell with this – we’d better go somewhere else. It’s time to get on the bus and go elsewhere.’
I think Scotland has got a reasonable reputation in that regard. Certainly some of the English criminal gangs find us pretty draconian in policing and in sentencing from the courts. Some Liverpool criminals up here got fifteen-year sentences when they would have got three or four years at home. They were wondering what kind of country this was. That’s the message we want to send out. We’re here to look after the Scottish community and the Scottish economy.
Pearson has explored various legal methods that could be adopted to make life more uncomfortable for high-level criminals. In recent years, businesses like law firms, estate agents and car dealers have been obliged by law to disclose suspicious cash transactions. Any such transaction ‘with a kilt’ – or Scottish angle – now passes through the SCDEA for analysis. The thousands of little jigsaw pieces of information can create a vivid picture.
Lifetime financial reports are soon to be introduced, compelling the targets to disclose details of their financial affairs for many years. Pearson also believes that the tag of ‘career criminal’ could be given to those suspected of involvement in organised crime. He said:
I would like to see people characterised as serious and organised criminals. We could then put pressure on every one. Every time they are involved in an alleged offence, no matter how minor, we would treat it seriously because it is a serious criminal involved. A breach of the peace at a nightclub is the kind of thing that these men often walk away from. Perhaps officers think there is little point in pursuing serious criminals for something so minor. Perhaps the case drags on and a year later witnesses are unavailable or do not remember. Whatever the reason, they walk away and that adds to this image of them as somehow untouchable. That would change. As soon as one of these criminals is involved in something, however mundane, detectives would be there taking statements, getting witnesses, getting forensics and fingerprints. The case would be flagged to the Crown and fast-tracked into court with a far greater likelihood of these guys being put in the dock and getting convicted of something. That will send a message.
They believe they can behave how they want and get away with it. That’s why you get people like Stevenson being convicted of serious organised crime yet he has no previous convictions. How does that happen?
Pearson also believes that the fortunes paid out in Legal Aid to suspects later convicted of serious crime should be clawed back and he hails the introduction of Organised Crime Prevention Orders intended to curb criminals’ travel. However, he believes Operation Folklore has only underlined the increasing focus on the dirty millions being stashed and laundered as the authorities open a new front in the war against serious and organised crime.
Pearson stepped down from the SCDEA amid speculation that he fears the expanding role of the recently formed Police Services Authority will undermine the fight against serious and organised crime. However, he believes his old agency’s priority must remain the disruption, if not detention, of Scotland’s most successful criminals. He said:
The landscape has changed and people need to understand that. Money laundering is going to be key. It’s a question of following the money. Operation Folklore defines what we are about as an agency. Ultimately, it is up to the people of Scotland to debate and decide if what we are doing here is worthwhile – if we should be doing more Folklores.
50
Down but Out?
It took four years for Operation Folklore to put Stevenson behind bars but, with good behaviour, he may not spend that much longer in jail. There is nothing to suggest he will not be a model prisoner. In Shotts jail, where he joined Scotland’s most serious criminals in May 2007 after being held on remand at Edinburgh’s Saughton Prison, he is vocal in his determination to do his time and get out to his wife, family and fortune as soon as possible. He is applying to the Open University Business School. He says he is going straight.
Stevenson has shrugged off reports that his old enemies in Springburn might still have a thirst for revenge now that he is a captive target. One ally who has spoken to him about an alleged McGovern plot to have him killed in jail for a £50,000 bounty said:
He’s laughing about it. He thinks they’re dafties. His biggest regret is not taking care of them all when he had the chance.
Robert O’Hara, who threw the can of Coke at Stevenson, was meant to be an ally of the McGoverns but he now seems as thick as thieves with Jamie. They were meant to be deadly enemies and people thought O’Hara might have a go at Stevenson but they wander around the exercise yard talking with each other.
Shotts is like most jails – if you’ve got money, it’s a lot easier. Guys like Stevenson can lay their hands on pretty much anything they want.
Stevenson might be inside but he’s got so many formidable guys still loyal to him on the outside. I don’t think he’s bothered at the moment but, if he has to take care of the McGoverns or anyone else by remote control, then he will. It’s not his priority though.
The main concern is for his wife. The friend said:
He’s worried about Caroline – about how she’s coping on her own. The authorities are still all over his money so she was having a wee cash-flow problem after he got jailed. He’s tasked some guys to chase up debts that are owed. There’s four guys in particular who owe him a fair bit of money – amounts like £300,000. I would imagine his people will be fairly effective in collecting once they find them.
One of Stevenson’s associates is 30-year-old Barry Hughes, a millionaire boxing promoter with interests in car sales and property. The former lightweight fighter, nicknamed Braveheart in the ring, was convicted in 2009 for his part in a vicious nightclub knife attack. One associate said:
Stevenson knows Hughes well and received a couple of visits from him while at Saughton. Hughes has been asked to ensure that Caroline is all right for cash in the meantime.
The business Stevenson is in, jail is an occupational hazard. You can run your end of things like clockwork but you’re at the mercy of events, of other people doing their job. You’ve no insurance if you get banged up. Your pals outside are your insurance – what you’ve managed to amass and stash away is your insurance.
He says he’s going legitimate – that he’s had enough. But it’s in his blood. I don’t think he’ll do anything to rock the boat unless he can’t avoid it. He’s determined to do his sentence and get out as quickly and painlessly as possible.
Stevenson’s high-powered legal team are currently preparing an appeal against the length of his sentence but, even if they are unsuccessful in having it reduced – or, Stevenson’s worst-case scenario, it is lengthened – he is likely to serve a maximum of eight years behind bars. One lawyer, with knowledge of the case, said the decision to drop the drugs-smuggling charges could signal a sea change in future prosecutions. He said:
If the drugs [charges] had stayed, Stevenson would have been looking at twenty-five, thirty years – easily. He might never have got out. Instead of which, he’ll be out training for freedom in six years or so. He’ll be on home visits doing his Christmas shopping in Sauchiehall Street in 2013. He’s a white-collar criminal – no drugs, no violence, good behaviour inside. He got twelve years and nine months. Take off his remand time, he’s down to twelve and could be out after half. That is not a long time. Not when you fully appreciate the time, energy and money that went into Folklore.
Of course, the evidence is the biggest factor in what happens with these plea deals but you’d be naive to think it is the only thing that matters. The Crown are under so much pressure that tying up a court for four, five, six months is a huge consideration. The trial would easily have cost
£5
million, probably more, without any certainty of getting the right verdict at the end of it. That’s a lot to commit to when you’re being offered the chance to jail the bad guys right now for free.Stevenson’s stepson Carbin got concurrent sentences so basically he ended up with little more than five years or so. It’s the same sentence as some drunk going into a corner shop with a water pistol and demanding a bottle of Buckfast. He’s helped import tonnes and tonnes of drugs, made millions and he’ll be walking out the gates in a couple of years beside the bam with the water gun.
The legal source highlighted the case of Gordon McLeod, fifty-one, who was jailed for nine years in August 2005 after heroin worth £10 million was found at his home in Uddingston, Lanarkshire. Detectives believe the consignment was one of Stevenson’s but could never prove it. The experienced defence lawyer said:
It’s hard not to compare that sentence to Stevenson’s. McLeod was a minion, a foot soldier, but was getting the same stretch, give or take a few years, as the millionaire criminal running the show for years and years. I’ve no sympathy for McLeod but, if he deserves nine years, then Stevenson should never see the light of day.
I can understand why the police would be spitting nails about Stevenson and they must be asking if it’s worth the candle. Is it worth all the man-hours, all the surveillance, to get to the drugs when they are only pleading to the money? Let’s just go after the money.
Since April 2007, the SCDEA has been exempt from freedom of information laws which means that the full cost of Folklore is unlikely to ever be made public. One detective, who worked on surveillance during Folklore, agrees that the operation is one of the most expensive ever pursued in Scotland but insists the investment was justified.
It would have been cheaper to have gone to Stevenson and said, ‘Look, here’s a million quid, now piss off.’ But you can’t put a price on the message his conviction has sent out to men like him. We get accused of only getting to the small fish, the guys near the bottom of the pile. Well, you don’t get any bigger than Stevenson.
He thought he was untouchable – so far up the chain that we couldn’t get to him even if we tried. Well, putting him away shows we can get anyone and that is going to alarm the others like him.
They know we’re not kidding.
While the four-year Operation Folklore succeeded in putting Stevenson behind bars, the official offensive against his dirty millions also took years but achieved a less clear-cut result. In 2009, former Home Secretary David Blunkett, the architect of the laws designed to strip Britain’s criminal godfathers of their dirty fortune, would admit: ‘We’ve failed on the ambition of bankrupting those who had made enormous amounts of money out of criminal behaviour and we’ve got to renew our efforts to achieve that.’ He was only publicly acknowledging what Stevenson, his fellow multi-millionaire criminals, and their lawyers already knew.
