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Authors: Graham Johnson

BOOK: Powder Wars
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I knew the teams that were bringing the drugs in and the crews who were knocking them out. I knew it was only a matter of time before our paths crossed.
18
Haase Backgrounder
In the years since they had drifted apart sometime in the 1980s Paul Grimes was unaware that his old pal John Haase had become one of Britain's most feared gangsters.
Haase had made the transition from armed robber to international drug dealer at exactly the right time – and struck gold. In fact, senior-level villains in Liverpool now look back on the late '80s and early '90s with rose-tinted glasses, fondly remembering them as the glory years of drug dealing, in much the same way as Victorian mill owners must have looked back on the Industrial Revolution.
Haase was now a multi-millionaire heroin baron. At the same time as Paul Grimes was waging his one-man crusade against Warren in the early '90s, Haase was secretly expanding his empire. Haase had secretly pioneered the Turkish Connection to the UK; the trading route from the poppy fields of Afghanistan to the cafes of Stoke Newington, controlled by the fearless Turkish Mafia. Haase had grown so close to the Turk babas or godfathers, and his buying power was so huge, that he was granted direct access to the mujahideen warlords in Afghanistan. He often left his suburban home in Liverpool to fly to their mountain redoubts in person to inspect the goods. He had come a long way since his days as a small-time crook.
Haase picked up his first conviction in December 1963 when he was given a conditional discharge for minor offences at Liverpool City Juvenile Court. One year later he was nicked for larceny and breaking into a shop, and in January 1964 he was sentenced to probation, again at Liverpool City Juvenile Court.
Like many a young Scouse rapscallion before him, he had invaded the relatively peaceful pastures of north Wales to pillage the rich pickings. In March 1964, he was given two years' probation at Llangollen Juvenile Court for unlawfully taking a mailbag. Two years later he was fined £5 at Liverpool Magistrates' Court for stealing a box of grapes. In April 1966, he was sentenced to six months in prison, suspended at Denbigh Quarter Session for larceny of lead.
In March 1969, he was sent to prison for the first time after he breached the conditions of his suspended sentence when he was caught taking a car without consent. A year later, in March 1970, Haase was jailed for 18 months at Liverpool Crown Court for burglary and theft. Then for a string of similar offences he was given two years' probation at Preston Crown Court in June 1972.
In March 1973, Haase got seven years for his part in five armed raids on post offices and betting shops and two attacks on police. Jailing him, Judge Rudolph Lyons said: ‘The time has come for your reign of terror in Liverpool to come to an end. You are an evil, dangerous man.' A detective who worked on the case later told the
Daily Mirror
newspaper that a female employee who had stared down the barrel of Haase's trademark shotgun never recovered from the ordeal. The detective said: ‘She was totally traumatised by what happened to her.'
By the late '70s John was the leader of a ruthless gang of armed robbers known as the Transit mob. Their trademark MO was to spring out of the back of a Ford Transit van, armed to the teeth, and pounce on their victims. But despite being super tight and supposedly impenetrable, they were caught and in July 1982 Haase got 14 years for armed robbery on two post office vans. Haase was then 34. Haase's co-conspirator, danny Vaughan, was jailed for 13 years.
Haase always blamed a supergrass called Roy Grantham for informing on the Transit mob. Several years later Grantham allegedly committed suicide after mysteriously disappearing at sea on a boating trip. Underworld sources maintain he was killed in revenge for betraying the Transit mob.
The case was further complicated by evidence given at the trial by a second supergrass called Dennis Wilkinson. Wilkinson was a violent and sadistic veteran of the Scottish underworld. In the early '80s, he was arrested for attempted murder, indecent assault, extortion and robbery on a young man. On remand, he claimed that he had befriended John Haase and Danny Vaughan. Facing a possible 20-year sentence, Wilkinson swore under oath that Vaughan and Haase had confessed in the prison exercise yard to the Transit mob robberies. His evidence was crucial in convicting Haase and Vaughan.
Wilkinson later retracted his statement, claiming in a
Sunday People
story that he fitted up the pair on the instructions of a bent copper who had passed him Vaughan's confidential file and told him to memorise the evidence. Wilkinson claimed that he had perjured himself.
Seizing on an apparent miscarriage of justice, in 1984 friends and relatives of Haase and Vaughan climbed the 120-foot Wellington Monument in Liverpool to protest at their imprisonment. However, the protest, which later inspired the ‘Free George Jackson' campaign in the soap opera
Brookside
, was in vain. It did not result in freedom.
Following his release in 1990 Haase realised that there was no future in armed robberies. He noticed that his contemporaries in the Liverpool Mafia were riding the crest of the drugs boom and he wanted a piece of it. What's more, Haase had the respect and the firepower to muscle in and that is exactly what he did.
Haase's point of entry into the drugs business owed itself to contacts he had made in jail and his nephew, Paul Bennett, a 30-something gangster who in the late '80s/early '90s was doing to heroin what Curtis Warren had done to cocaine. Bennett had excellent distribution networks in Britain. Whilst Haase had been in jail, he had cultivated a relationship with one of Turkey's most powerful babas, known as the ‘Vulcan'.
This mysterious crime boss controlled the wholesale poppy market in Afghanistan and the trafficking lines through Turkey, the Balkans and around the Caspian Sea known as the ‘southern route'. His vast wealth ensured that every time the Vulcan had been sent to jail, he had managed to buy himself out. The police complained that his organisation was immune because he owned politicians, judges and senior law officials.
The Vulcan was impressed enough with Haase to put him in the safe hands of his own son-in-law, a heavyweight heroin baron called Yilmaz Kaya. Haase introduced Kaya to Bennett. Recognising that Haase had the muscle and the experience to run a large criminal enterprise the Turks were more than impressed. They began dealing directly with Haase. Business boomed.
Within a relatively short period, Haase had taken over a large slice of Liverpool's and thus Britain's heroin import. Between 1989 and 1993 his trafficking ring was the biggest in Britain. Unique amongst the Liverpool Mafia, he did business alone. He was not a team player, more of a maverick who was suspicious of their cliquiness, taking comfort in the anonymity of doing business with firms far afield.
Haase feared no one. To prove it, he even leant on the untouchable Curtis Warren. Haase had met Warren in 1990 and helped him sell a consignment of cocaine, but when a business deal with one of Warren's top bosses had gone badly wrong, Haase stepped in. As punishment Haase kidnapped the gangster involved and ‘taxed' Warren's crew for £50,000. The victim protested, using the defence: ‘You can't do this. I work for Curtis.' Haase replied: ‘So fucking what? Get the money or you will be killed.' The ransom was paid.
At the height of Haase's success there occurred one of the most extraordinary events in British judicial history. It mirrored the strange and sinister legal workings that had loomed large in the Warren case and in another striking similarity with the case, Paul Grimes was to become a key figure.
In the summer of 1992 Customs and Excise officers put John Haase under surveillance. Rightly they believed him to be the British-end kingpin of a Turkish heroin smuggling ring. Unable to infiltrate the gang, Customs officers decided to ‘follow the money' in the hope of unravelling their modus operandi. They watched as nearly £2 million was handed over to a North London Turkish outfit headed by 26-year-old godfather, Yilmaz Kaya. The cash was spirited back to Turkey via Heathrow airport.
However, the real money was being made in Liverpool. Two of the Turks were regularly followed on frequent visits to Liverpool where they met Haase, who by then had firmly installed his nephew, Paul Bennett, as his deputy and a dealer called Edward Croker to oversee distribution on the street. Watching in secret, the Customs officers looked on in amazement as bundles of cash the size of house bricks were handed over in a heavy plastic bag at the Black Horse pub in Liverpool.
In July 1993 Customs moved in on the gang. A staggering 55 kilos of heroin with a street value of £18 million were discovered in the bedroom of a safe house in Evesham Road, Walton. Haase immediately suspected that Customs had been helped by a secret informant. He blamed a businessman called John Healey, who was indebted to Haase for over £1 million. Haase raged that Healey had ratted him out in order to avoid paying back the money and that it was a fit up. His protestations fell on deaf ears.
Two years later in August 1995 the eight men involved were jailed for a total of 110 years. Haase, then 46, was sentenced to an unprecedentedly severe 18 years, as was Paul Bennett, then 31. They had £840,000 in cash confiscated. Croker, then 31, was jailed for 14 years and had £110,000 confiscated. All three Liverpool gangsters had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply heroin. Judge David Lynch said: ‘It is rare that the courts deal with people so high up the ladder. It must be marked by a heavy sentence.'
The five Turks involved – Suleyman Ergun, 26, Mehmet Ansen, 54, Yilmaz Kaya, 29, Bulent Onay, 39, and Manuk Ocecki, 37 – also received hefty sentences. It was a major coup for the Customs and Excise, who were still reeling from the fallout of the collapsed Warren case.
A senior Customs investigator who worked on the case said:
We were delighted with the result. For us it was a turning point in the fight against the big players. We had managed to bring down a complicated international gang successfully. And we were confident we could do it again.
The sentences were deservedly harsh. Without time off for good behaviour. And we were confident that Haase would get as little as possible off because he is notoriously uncooperative – he was expected to be released in 2013. We couldn't have wished for better. He was a dangerous man best kept off the streets.
19
Freed
Under the Criminal Justice Act 1991, the earliest Haase would be considered for parole was 2002. Failing this, he would normally have been released two-thirds of the way through his sentence in 2005. But 11 months after he was sentenced on 4 July 1996 a bombshell dropped – and seemed to explode with nuclear force. Haase and Bennett were mysteriously released from prison after striking a secret deal with the then Tory Home Secretary, Michael Howard.
The scandal sent shockwaves around the nation. The
Sunday Mirror
, the newspaper that broke the story, splashed it across the front page under the headline: ‘Two-Faced Howard – Heroin dealers jailed for 18 years . . . then HE frees them after 11 months in secret deal.'
The ‘full shock story' on pages four and five revealed ‘the scandalous secret the Home Secretary didn't want you to know'. The details of the deal were unfolded. It was revealed that Judge Lynch, who had jailed Haase and Bennett one year earlier, had been urged by Customs and Excise to write to Mr Howard recommending that their sentences be reduced. No one quite knew why at that stage, but it was hinted that the pair of hardened gangsters had turned informants.
Astutely, the paper pointed out that if that was the case then why were Haase and Bennett parading around Liverpool as cocky as ever without a care in the world? Surely if they had grassed up top underworld figures they would be in hiding in fear for their lives?
The article appeared as follows:
Sunday Mirror
01/09/1996
REVEALED . . . THE SCANDALOUS SECRET THE HOME SECRETARY DIDN'T WANT YOU TO KNOW It was, in the words police use among themselves, a result. The two ringleaders of a highly organised international gang who smuggled millions of pounds worth of heroin into Britain had each been jailed for 18 years. John Haase, 46, and Paul Bennett, 31, were sent down with the words of Judge David Lynch ringing in their ears. ‘It is rare that courts deal with people so high up the ladder as you, and it must be marked by a heavy sentence.'
But just 11 months after their cell doors slammed shut behind them, the two crooks were swaggering down the streets of Liverpool – set free by Home Secretary Michael Howard, who received a letter from the judge after a plea from Customs officials.
Yes, the same Michael Howard who has demanded powers to increase criminals' sentences and promised the British public that a life sentence must mean a life sentence.
Yes, the same Michael Howard who went to court last week to halt early release of prisoners. Yes, the same Michael Howard who attacked drug dealers in the House of Commons, telling MPs: ‘The Government is determined that those who persist in causing human misery and ruined lives should get the punishment they richly deserve.'
Last night the astonishing deal was greeted with disbelief by police, anti-drugs campaigners and parents who fear their children could be among the 1,000 people killed by heroin each year. ‘I just can't believe these two are back out – we thought they were going to be off the scene for a long, long time,' one Liverpool detective told the
Sunday Mirror
.
A spokesman for the drugs charity Turning Point said: ‘These two were major players in bringing the deadliest drugs into Britain. I am amazed that they are out on the streets so early.'
And Karen Griffiths, whose 18-year-old heroin addict son committed suicide after kicking the drug, said: ‘This is outrageous. I can't see how these men can have got out after having served so little time. They are just going to do the same crimes over and over again.'
Haase and Bennett led a gang that specialised in the Turkish Connection, running heroin into Liverpool, which in the '80s was so awash with the drug it was known as Smack City.
Bundles of cash the size of house bricks were handed over in heavy plastic bags in the Liverpool pub the Black Horse and taken back to Turkey. Some of it was the gang's profits and the rest was reinvested to buy more drugs. When police and Customs swooped they seized a massive 190 lbs of heroin, one of the biggest hauls ever.
Haase and Bennett admitted conspiracy to supply heroin, and also had about £840,000 each confiscated. In total, the eight-man gang, including five Turks, were sentenced to 110 years inside.
At their trial in August last year, Judge Lynch told Haase and Bennett that the courts often dealt with the pitiful wretches who sell heroin on the streets to feed their own addiction, and rarely got an opportunity to punish the ringleaders. But following a request from Customs officials, the judge wrote to Mr Howard with his recommendation that the sentences be reduced. The deal was done. Less than a year later, Haase and Bennett walked free, and it's hard to guess who is more amazed – the Liverpool police, or Liverpool's crooks.
One senior detective said: ‘Locking up two major drug players was seen by many police officers as a great victory. Now they are out again and one can only assume they must have come to some arrangement with Her Majesty's Customs.'
One of the city's better-known crooks was equally stunned: ‘The two of them were seen strolling down Dale Street together last week – the whole of Liverpool's underworld knows they are out. They even went to see one of the main guys who run the city's nightclub doormen. It's all very sinister – but they are simply brazening it out.'
Judge Lynch refused to comment about the case, but has told colleagues: ‘I would like to discuss the details of this but there are certain restraints.'
When the Home Office discovered the
Sunday Mirror
was about to reveal details of the scandal, a senior aide to Mr Howard asked that the story should not be published. He denied that the request was being made to save Michael Howard's embarrassment and suggested we speak to a senior Customs investigator involved in the case. The Customs man said: ‘If you want to quote me, people who help us get credit for it.' He admitted that Haase and Bennett were up to their necks in smuggling heroin, and that they turned informer only after they were arrested and remanded in custody – to save their own skins.
The Customs investigator said the two crooks could be in danger after informing on their former associates. But Haase and Bennett have made no attempt to hide or change their identities. Instead, their underworld reputations have been hugely boosted as men who can get out of an 18-year sentence.
And the decision to release them will cause further embarrassment to already under-fire Home Secretary Michael Howard. Five months ago he launched what he claimed was his toughest crackdown yet on Britain's criminals in a White Paper called ‘Protecting The Public' – and he promised to target drug dealers. He told MPs in the Commons dealers were a ‘scourge on society' and added: ‘They prey on the young and innocent. They wreck people's lives.'
Mr Howard promised that his tougher sentencing policy would lead to a dramatic decrease in crime figures and clean up our towns and cities. He added: ‘These proposals are tough and so they should be. They need to protect the public and build a safer Britain. Our duty and task is to protect people's freedom to walk safely on their streets and sleep safely in their homes. We have taken action to ensure that the balance in the criminal justice system favours the law-abiding public, not the criminal.'
Last night a Home Office spokesman said: ‘We do not comment on individual cases in which the Royal Prerogative has been exercised.'
But there was growing outrage at the secret deal to free the two drug smugglers. Liberal Democrat MP Alex Carlile said: ‘The Home Secretary must make a statement about this case.' Furious mother Karen Griffiths blames pushers who tempted her son into trying heroin for causing his death in 1995.
Yesterday Karen, 38, of Tonyrefail, South Wales, said: ‘It was probably people like these two who gave my son heroin and caused his death. People have got to realise that our children are at risk from people like this. It's time someone took notice of what's happening on our streets. Byron was the apple of my eye. I really loved him more than anything but when he got into drugs there was just nothing I could do. I saw him change from an innocent teenager into someone I didn't even recognise as my own son.' Mother-of-two Karen has now set up a support group for other parents in South Wales whose children are addicted to drugs. She added: ‘I wouldn't want any other mother to go through what I had to with Byron. People have got to act before it is too late. The problem is not going to go away.
‘It's escalating, and the release of people like this after spending so short a time in jail is just adding to the problem.'
Drugs charity, Turning Point was also shocked to learn of Haase and Bennett's early release from jail. Last night a spokesman said: ‘Given the amount of heroin they were caught with, it does seem amazing that these two convicted drug dealers have been released early from an 18-year sentence.
‘I can only assume that the information they provided to Customs and Excise was of invaluable assistance.
‘But that will be of little comfort to the families and friends of the 1,000 people a year who die in this country from heroin addiction alone. And the others whose lives are scarred forever by becoming hooked on drugs.'

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