The timeshare tycoon who allegedly masterminded a

The timeshare tycoon who allegedly masterminded a Brentwood based con claims he was set up after police failed to nail him for handling stolen gold.

Multi-millioniare John Palmer, whose girlfriend Christina Ketley ran his offices in the town, blamed his ongoing court battle on bitter police.

In a sensational address to the jury, Palmer, 49, admitted he has been in the dock before when he was accused of helping to melt down the Brinks-Mat gold bullion.

The gold was said to be the proceeds of the
record-breaking pnds stlg 27 million raid at Heathrow in 1983.

After he was cleared at court, Palmer said detectives were so desperate to send him to jail for money laundering they joined forces with TV’s The Cook Report.

But according to Palmer, no evidence of money laundering was found during their nine-month investigation – so they turned their attentions to his timeshare business.

Officers sifted through reams of paperwork and stumbled across a fraud being carried out by his sales director.

Palmer said that the police then desperately tried to prove he was masterminding the con – even though he is completely innocent.

And he claimed that one officer had been recorded admitting that they wanted to get the businessman by ‘legal or illegal means’.

Palmer, who is defending himself explained that in 1988 a jury took just two hours to clear him of smelting down Brinks-Mat gold.

He then began setting up his enormous timeshare empire based in the Canary Islands, but claims he became the target of bitter cops.

‘I was acquitted, and the judge awarded me full costs.

Ever since that, the police have been determined to get me by legal or illegal means,’ he said.

‘These words were said by a leading police officer in this court about me – unbeknown to him, it was tape-recorded outside this court.

‘

Palmer said he is ‘very wealthy man’, who had made a huge amount of money from timeshare.

But he said police launched an operation against him to trap him for money laundering.

The businessman continued: ‘It was a deliberate set up.

Two Brinks-Mat police acted in corroboration with the Cook Report – Roger Cook, a man who has been brought into disrepute himself.

‘They were trying to trick me.

Why? They were trying to do it to to get access to examine my bank accounts which they could not do lawfully.

‘

Palmer explained that a firm of loss adjusters had been instructed by Lloyds, who insured the Brinks-Mat gold, to get ‘large sums of money out of anyone worth suing’.

He added: ‘I was that person.

‘

He claimed that officers involved in the operation were to be paid 20 per cent of any money recovered, but despite an intensive probe they could find no wrongdoing.

Palmer told the jury: ‘They were all out to line their own pockets.

They knew there was no money laundering.

‘After pouring through paperwork, they found evidence of a fraud by my sales director Brendan Hannon.

They spent the next five years trying to manufacture a case to try to tie me in with that fraud.

‘It is nothing to do with me, and they have known that all along.

They have done anything to try to get me, and have spent millions upon millions of pounds – public money – to get me and pursue their private greed.

‘

The prosecution claim Palmer, together with his nephew Andrew, 31, and girlfriend, 39-year-old Christina Ketley ran a network of companies controlling the scam.

Salesman used slick techniques to suck tourists into signing timeshare contracts which ripped them off for thousands of pounds, it is claimed.

They were told their existing timeshare would be sold for them if they bought another at a Palmer resort – but many were then simply left lumbered with two properties.

More than 17,000 tourists were fleeced of pnds stlg 30 million in the con.

But Palmer told the jury on the third day of the trial: ‘I am not guilty; nor is Miss Ketley and nor is Andrew Palmer.

‘You are going to hear a lot of sad cases, the worst the prosecution could find.

But don’t blame me for that, unless you think I am part of the conspiracy.

‘

Opening the prosecution case, Mr David Farrer, QC, said: ‘This is a story of a very large number of ordinary people who were systematically tricked into buying timeshare apartments on Tenerife.

‘They were tricked into paying large sums of money which many of them could not afford to lose, and they were tricked by a series of lies and false promises that timeshares which they already owned would be sold quickly for them, and at very attractive high prices.

‘

John Palmer, of Battlefields, Bath, Andrew Palmer, from Meadow Cottage, Meadow Lane, Solihull, and Ketley, of Foxdown Cottage, Sandpit Lane, Brentwood, Essex, all deny two charges of conspiracy to defraud between 1989 and 1997.

The trial continues.

ends