Investigator denies asset probe was manipulated in deal with grass

A financial investigator today (Weds) denied an inquiry into a drug baron’s assets was manipulated in exchange for his evidence against suspects accused of an axe murder.

Private eye Daniel Morgan, a partner in Southern Investigations, was found an axe buried in his head in the carpark of the Golden Lion pub in Sydenham, southeast London, in 1987.

No one has ever been successfully prosecuted for the crime, despite five separate inquiries costing the taxpayer £50 million.

In 2011, a case against five men was thrown out after claims that the officer in charge of the investigation, Detective Chief Superintendent Dave Cook, had relied on trumped up evidence from supergrasses.

Mr Cook, who has since quit the Met and retired to Scotland, led the final investigation in to the murder beginning in 2002 and codenamed Operation Abelard II.

One of the grasses, drug smuggler James Ward, was facing 17 years in jail and a bill of £4.9 million when he offered to help Mr Cook nail the suspects.

He ended up serving just three years in jail and paid back just £633,000 to the public purse.

Ward was connected to the suspects via Garry Vian, with whom he had run a cannabis smuggling operation in the 1980s and 1990s.

Now, the three suspects prosecuted for the murder – Mr Morgan’s business partner, Jonathan Rees, 62, and his brothers-in-law Garry, 58, and Glenn Vian, 56 – are seeking millions in damages from the Met for their wrongful arrest.

They were arrested 21 years after the murder in 2008 and held on remand for almost two years before their trial collapsed without ever getting near a jury.

They claim that early on, investigating officers fixated on them, and refused to pursue alternative lines of inquiry.

Former Met detective Sid Fillery, 70, who took on Morgan’s job after his death, was also charged with perverting the course of justice.

Fillery was a personal friend of Rees, and had been out drinking with him in the days after Morgan’s death, but was also on the investigating team that took the first statements from potential witnesses.

He was accused of threatening witnesses who may have come forward with incriminating evidence.

A fifth man, James ‘Jimmy’ Cook, was also charged with murder, but has declined to join his four co-defendants in their case against the police.

Mark Hewitt, an investigator in the Central Economic Unit, was one of the men investigating the extent of Ward’s benefit in his career spanning three decades.

He admitted that the figure Ward owed had fallen dramatically, but denied that his investigation had been manipulated to persuade Ward to cooperate.

The court heard police are prohibited from making financial deals with criminals in relation to asset confiscation in exchange for information, they can only make deals on the length of their sentence.

But before agreeing to cooperate in late 2005, Ward had approached officers in Operation Abelard II and told them he was worried about the health of his wife, who was facing being charged for money laundering.

As a result, the CPS decided first not to press any charges against her without considering her illness, then decided to take no further action in early January 2006.

Stephen Simblet, for Garry Vian, said: ‘So it seems by this time, Ward was seeing how much he could bargain – what he could get for his cooperation.’

‘It appears that Ward can affect the charging decision depending on the extent of his cooperation – officers must have known that he was about to help them in their investigation.’

Mr Hewitt was also asked to go to HMP Belmarsh to fetch Ward under the guise that it was part of the POCA investigation, when in fact he was having an interview with Mr Cook about the Daniel Morgan murder.

‘That ruse was to stop him getting injured or killed while in Belmarsh. It was sanctioned by my senior manager. It wasn’t a deal between me and Mr Cook.

‘I delivered Mr Ward to Mr Cook and then essentially made myself scarce until it was time to take Mr Ward back again.’

Mr Simblet said: ‘This financial investigation had been a nightmare for him, not only was he facing 17 years in prison, if he couldn’t produce the £3 million in confiscation money he was looking at an extra 10 years.

Mr Simblet asked the officer if Ward had tried to influence him about the possible outcome of the financial investigation.

‘He would have had the opportunity to talk to about what he wanted, you are the face of the people who are coming after him for his assets – is reducing the confiscation amount something he discussed with you?’

Mr Hewitt replied: ‘I think he was very wary around me because I wasn’t on my own at that time. I think that if he wanted to approach me he wouldn’t have done it at that time.’

He said that Ward had never asked him about manipulating the confiscation figure in exchange for a reduction in the money he owed the state.

After two years of investigations, the sum total of Ward’s benefit had been pegged at £4.9 million, and found that it could be realised in full through the sale of his properties, the court heard.

But just a few weeks after making his statement in November 2006, his benefit figure had been reduced to £3.8 million, with a realisable sum of just £1.4 million.

He eventually ended up paying back just £632,965.

Mr Simblet said: ‘Do you think it’s possible that Ward was prompted into becoming a witness for the prosecution by being reminded of the £4.9 million in confiscation proceedings, and that he had done nothing useful to deal with them since August 2006.’

‘It’s possible, but if you are asking me if I knew anything about that, then I didn’t,’ Mr Hewitt replied.

Mr Hewitt that at one point, he had been asked to go and speak to Ward in prison by Operation Abelard II investigators to try and find out if he knew any more.

The officer denied it was unusual, saying: ‘I had built up a rapport with Ward, even if people don’t like what I am doing they will often speak to me.’

The senior Crown Prosecution Service lawyer – Stuart Sampson – responsible for the charging decisions in Operation Abelard II, also oversaw the Proceeds of Crime Act investigation against Ward.

At one point, Ward claimed that a valuable two-bedroom flat in Battersea Ward had inherited from his parents was joint owned with his sister through a verbal agreement.

No officers spoke to the sister or her lawyers, and no documentation was produced to support Ward’s claim, yet Mr Sampson agreed that the asset could be struck out of the proceedings.

When asked if he had tried to verify Ward’s claims himself, Hewitt said: ‘I had the say so of the senior prosecutor and that will do for me’.

He added: ‘A lot of people got very excited about the Proceeds of Crime Act when it was introduced thinking the police would be taking a lot of money of criminals, but it’s not as straightforward as that.

‘It’s not unusual for the figures to go down, ultimately it’s about following cash flows and making estimates so it’s not an exact science.’

He repeatedly denied that he had been part of any kind of deal to reduce Ward’s bill to the state to get him to talk.

The arrests of the four men in 2008 hinged upon evidence from two criminals – career criminal Gary Eaton and Ward.

Mr Cook had had regular personal contact with the two men, despite the fact they were supposed to be kept in a ‘sterile corridor’ and completely separate from officers on the main case.

The four claimants say all of the investigations and reviews which took place – resulting in 500,000 pages of documents – were aimed at securing their convictions.

The Met contends there was ‘ample’ justification for the prosecution of the men.

According to police, Rees commissioned the murder, Glenn Vian wielded the axe, while his brother Gary was on hand to help out if he was needed.

They claim Cook drove the getaway car, whilst Fillery – who at the time was still a serving police officer – nobbled a witness, telling him he would ‘get the same’ if he breathed a word about the killing.

Rees allegedly wanted rid of his business partner after Mr Morgan discovered Rees was using Southern Investigations to launder the proceeds of drug trafficking, and also that Rees was obtaining information from corrupt serving police officers.

Also, the business had accrued a hefty debt after Rees was robbed while taking care of the proceedings of a car auction – Mr Morgan allegedly believed the robbery had been staged by Rees’ dodgy associates.

Secret recordings of a man named Kevin Lennon, a former Southern Investigations employee, captured him claiming that Mr Rees had approached him to find someone to kill Daniel Morgan.

When confronted with the audio, Mr Lennon gave a statement claiming Mr Rees told him to forget about the hit because his friends at Catford police station would arrange the killing and suppress any information linking the murder back to him.

Other witnesses came forward to say that Jimmy Cook had confessed to witnessing the murder and using a pale green Volkswagen Polo as a getaway car.

DNA material recovered from the axe matched Glenn Vian’s wife and could have come from her or her blood relatives, the court heard.

The trial continues.
ENDS