Between 2012 and 2022, Line of Duty told the story of AC-12,
a fictional anti-corruption unit
that famously went after bent coppers.
But over 15 years prior to that hitting our screens,
before that series was dreamt up by its creator, Jed Mercurio,
a little-known unit of the Met was being secretly set up
to crack the cycle of corruption that had
infiltrated the country's biggest police force.
I was shocked.
Drug dealing, kidnap, armed robbery being carried out
by police officers was almost fiction, but it wasn't.
It was a reality.
Amid the scandals that engulfed the early nineties,
a few brave senior police chiefs
decided a new tactic was needed.
This could be a film.
You couldn't make it up.
A tactic that would go after those directly responsible
for the corruption to catch them in the act.
Greed, ego, power, it's all out there for grabs.
The fact it was nicknamed the Ghost Squad
sums it up really.
No one knew it existed,
and that's exactly how they'd want it.
That unit's name was CIB3,
and for the first time, this is its story.
CIB3 was set up in 1998 with the specific objective
of smashing the cycle of corruption
that had plagued the Met in the previous years.
The formation of CIB3, I think was A)
a turning point and extremely significant
in the fight against corruption.
Never before had so many resources from a
proactive side been thrown into dealing with
counter-corruption or dealing with corruption.
So, we were given those resources.
Not only we were given the resources,
we were allowed within reason, obviously and legally
allowed to push the barriers, which we did,
and we had the equipment to deal with that.
One of its first targets was a private investigation firm
called Southern Investigations
and a bent copper called Austin Warnes.
The story really with Southern Investigations begins in 1987
with the murder of Jonathan Rees's then partner,
running the organisation, Daniel Morgan.
Morgan was found dead with an axe
in his head in a pub car park.
Several people have been charged with involvement
in the murder, but no one has ever been convicted.
Sid Fillery came into the picture because
he was one of those involved in investigating the
Daniel Morgan murder, and he was suspected at one stage
of removing what he thought was incriminating documents.
Because allegations had been made against him,
he was removed from the murder investigation
and in fact left the police under something of a cloud.
And then a couple of years after the murder,
he then stepped into the dead mans shoes.
Daniel Morgan's shoes and became partner with Rees.
The pair of them then started going, doing a lot of business
with newspapers and media organisations,
getting information from police, corrupt police,
who would pass information to some investigations
who then pass on the information to newspapers
who would then do a story... stories about it
and this went on for some time.
So, Southern Investigations was becoming something
of a thorn in the Metropolitan police's side.
They were causing the Met problems.
CIB3 decides to target Southern Investigations
using its newfound powers to bug their office
with surveillance equipment.
The aim was to collect evidence that would help prove
there was a corrupt involvement with
Daniel Morgan's unsolved murder.
But the surveillance uncovered another chilling case
of corruption in action.
They were approached by a guy who was really worried
about losing custody of his child because he was going
through a dreadful acrimonious divorce with his wife.
The couple were called Simon and Kim James.
Simon James told Jonathan Rees
that he suspected his wife was involved in drug dealing.
Rees said, okay, well we'll get
evidence about that drug dealing.
And the pair agreed that when there was a divorce hearing,
this would be very telling evidence against the wife,
and it was hoped the judge would then give the husband,
Simon James, custody of their child.
Rees carried out a little bit of investigation but then couldn't
find anything relating to the wife being involved in drugs.
However, despite not finding any leads,
they didn't give up on helping their client.
They instead came up with an audacious plan
to frame Kim James.
So, these two in Southern Investigations says,
'I've got a plan, what we can do... your wife/partner goes out
night clubbing a lot, so ideally if we can put in her possession
some drugs, cocaine typically, we can then tip the cops off.
She'll get nicked.
Her credibility is shot a bits, so when she tries to get
custody of the child, there's no chance that the judge is
going to give it because she'd be seen as a drug dealer.'
'Happy days, you get custody that'll cost you £7,500.'
So, for seven and a half grand,
this guy says, 'Yeah, I'm up for that.'
But for the plan to work,
Southern Investigations would need the
planted drug seized by police officers.
Rees and Fillery had to have an inside man,
an inside corrupt cop.
That's when they turned to Austin Warnes.
Austin Warnes was regional crime squad detective.
He was pretty good.
He was seen I think he was seen by some of his peers
as a bit of a loose lips sort of individual,
but he had served on the regional crime squad
and had served on crime squads and you don't serve on
those sort of squads unless you have a proven background.
Austin Warnes was obviously quite happy to go along
with this fitting up of drugs on an innocent woman,
he falsified a report saying that he'd had intelligence.
An informant was telling him that she was dealing drugs.
That meant that after the drugs had been planted in the car,
he would then tip the police off that
there were drugs there in the car.
She was a drugs dealer and she'd get arrested.
Without his help in feeding information
that she was a drug dealer into the system,
the plan would not have worked.
He was essential for the plan to work.
He had no scruples whatsoever.
Just think about it. He's a serving cop.
He gets approached by Jonathan Rees and Sid Fillery,
the owners of Southern Investigations,
who already put in their back pocket £7,500
from the partner who wanted his wife
in the acrimonious separation to be incriminated.
And what he had to do was orchestrate the planting
of what drugs were going to be in the car,
which was going to incriminate her, to get a false
search warrant for the house and for the drugs in the car,
and then to execute that in the full knowledge
that she was innocent.
He does not sign the papers to be a cop
on day one to behave in that despicable way.
CIB3 had a complex job on their hands.
They needed to disrupt Southern Investigations plan
to frame Kim James and get enough evidence to ensure
the perpetrators including Austin Warnes
could be prosecuted and convicted.
The detective charged with leading the
operation was Roger Critchell.
Roger Critchell, fantastic operator headhunted by the boss,
David Wood because he knew him and trusted him, and he had
been very successful in investigating serious crime.
If he can do investigating serious crime,
he can certainly investigate corrupt cops.
What Roger Critchell's role in this was pivotal.
I mean, he had his senior bosses Chief Superintendent,
Superintendent level obviously being the oversight management
of it, but the development of the tactics and the execution
of the agreed strategy was in his hands,
and he had to have a test of nerve.
He couldn't bottle it.
Roger's job was to assess the intelligence
and come up with a proactive,
covert strategy that would catch those involved red handed.
It was known from the bugs that the drugs were going to be
planted in the wife's car, Kim James's car.
Why they chose the car, I don't know, but I suspect
it was easier because if you used the house,
how would you get the drugs into the house,
which if you use a car,
you can do the car in the middle of the night.
This of course caused a dilemma for CIB3,
those listening to the tapes, what do they do?
If we moved in too soon, then we would've shown
Rees and Warnes the fact that we were onto them,
but more importantly, we wouldn't have sufficient evidence
at that stage to prosecute them.
Roger and his team decided to let the criminals
plant the drugs in Kim James' car.
Then when the criminals had completed their work,
they'd replaced the cocaine with a harmless substance.
This would firstly enable Roger's team to prove
that the drugs planted were cocaine.
Secondly, it would Take away any doubt that Kim James
had anything to do with the illegal drugs.
And thirdly, as all of this was happening covertly,
it meant Southern Investigations and Austin Warnes
would carry on with their plans to report
Kim James as a suspected drug dealer.
So, we decided that the best thing to do
was to substitute the drugs.
That was the best evidential opportunity that we had to be
able to prove to a jury
that Kim James was completely innocent.
It also showed the magnitude of the corruption.
CIB3 had a plan, but this strategy presented
a number of dilemmas for Roger's team.
They were going to have to let the regular police who had
been tipped off by Warnes search Kim James's car,
find what they thought were real drugs
and subsequently arrest her.
It was clear that CIB3 was in unchartered territory.
The operation as because of what we then knew,
i.e. the planting of drugs become quite significant
in a number of factors.
We had the ethical and moral issue of Kim James.
We were going to allow an innocent person
to be arrested believing that there was drugs in her car.
Do you include her in what was going on with the
potential that you couldn't rely on her being discreet
and the whole operation would be blown apart.
However, as well as the ethical and moral issues,
CIB3 had to consider the legality of what they were doing
or risk the evidence they'd worked so hard to gather
being thrown out at any future trial.
I'd personally spoke to the C.P.S. at the time to
think about was it legal what we were doing
because we were going to let it happen.
And the decision was yes, it was legal to carry it out
in the fact that we were going to allow
a number of police officers to go to the car to search it,
believing that there was drugs there,
knowing that they had been planted,
and knowing that a serving police officer Austin Warnes
knew that they were going to be planted,
it was decided that that was okay to do.
So, they had surveillance cameras trained on the car
and the area, CIB3, and they waited and eventually a friend,
a colleague of Jonathan Rees called Jimmy Cook turned up.
He was also a drug dealer into lots of other things,
and he had in fact himself been a suspect involved
in the murder of Daniel Morgan.
He was seen breaking into the car,
entering the car, and planting some drugs there.
With the drugs in Kim James's car,
it was now up to corrupt officer Austin Warnes to play his part.
Austin Warnes didn't actually get involved
in the planning of the drugs.
His participation in this crime was to arrange for a police unit
not corrupt, to see to conduct a search warrant
on Kim James' car.
He put in an information report.
He made out that it was from an informant,
which was total rubbish obviously, and in the belief
in Austin Warnes' belief and in the belief of Jimmy Cook
and Jonathan Rees, that that was the job done.
With the regular police now tipped off,
a search on Kim James's car was imminent.
CIB3 had to act quickly, swap the real drugs
planted by Jimmy Cook for a harmless substance.
The swap was a success, but for Kim James,
her nightmare was just beginning.
Although CIB3 had switched the drugs
for a harmless substance,
Kim James didn't know that.
She thought she'd had it.
Having to go through the trauma and the pain
of having her house and her car searched
then the discovery of what she thought was drugs.
But she knows that they weren't her drugs
because she's not a drug dealer, being taken into custody,
and yet we all knew other than her
that she was totally innocent.
I think she actually fainted or passed out in the custody office.
Such was the magnitude of what was happening to her.
And she obviously knew she was completely innocent
and here she is knowing full well that this custody battle
is going on and therefore now what's just happened
means she's going to lose her child.
It's a serious offence against Kim James here
because the amount of drugs and the packaging of the drugs
suggested that she was supplying controlled drugs.
As Kim James's world came crashing down around her,
her estranged partner Simon James, as predicted,
applied to the court for custody of their child.
She just didn't know what was happening.
Her whole world had been turned upside down.
If she was interviewed, she...
denied any knowledge of the drugs.
After interview they released her on police bail to return
to the police station once the drugs had been analysed.
That could in normal circumstances
take a significant amount of time.
But time was something that neither Roger or Kim James had.
The clock was ticking.
And in order to avoid Simon James being granted custody,
Roger's team had to think smart and quick.
So, two stages, one stage was we went and saw the judge,
to the custody hearing to tell the judge
what was really happening because there's no doubt
the judge would have given Simon James custody of that child.
I then had to think how best to expedite the evidence
against Austin Warnes because I had a problem in that
I didn't really have that much evidence against Warnes.
All I had was him contacting a bona fide police officer
saying that he basically had information that it was in the car.
But Roger had noticed something about Austin Warnes'
tip off to the police that he could exploit.
We looked at the information report that Warnes had put in
and it was quite clear to me
that he was alleging that there was an informant.
I then went and saw the DCI who was the controller.
Basically, told him that in fact,
Austin Warnes had made this whole story up.
He was then given a direction that he would call Austin Warnes
in to then question the information that had been put in
and the fact that he wanted to see the informant.
Warnes now faced with a dilemma where he's got
to produce an informant and there isn't an informant.
What's happening here is CIB3 have taken the game to him.
The corrupt cop is on the rack. He thought he was in charge.
He thought he could get a search warrant
because he legitimately had those drugs planted.
As far as he was concerned, it was watertight.
But what he didn't know is behind the scenes,
CIB3 had beaten him to it.
So, he's back against the wall. He's looking for a lifeline.
He's been put on the rack.
You have got to tell us where did you get
that intelligence from because the judge wants to know
because before the judge makes an order - taking away
the custody of the child, he wants to make sure
that intelligence is legitimate.
That's a really difficult place to be.
You are rabbit caught in the headlights.
So, the corrupt cop, he decides to make it up
that his informant gave it to him. Big mistake.
Now feeling the pressure, Austin Warnes put forward
the name of a criminal associate who was well
connected in London's underworld.
The informant was a guy called David Courtney.
I don't know how Warnes knew him, but Warnes knew him.
He'd been a prize fighter. He was well connected
in the criminal fraternity, and he was well known
in the criminal world in South London.
Now this is a top criminal.
Someone not to be mixed with.
So, Warnes' then contacted him and it was all
quite bizarre really because it was a common,
we watched under surveillance.
Warnes' meeting Dave Courtney.
Dave Courtney's girlfriend, then took a photograph or a video
of Dave Courtney with his arm round Austin Warnes.
We didn't know at that stage why that was happening,
but what Warnes was doing was actually telling
or telling the story, the fact that he needed Dave Courtney
to go and say that he'd given that information.
He was spitting feathers when he found out
that what he had to do was lie to legitimise
the intelligence for the search warrant.
When interviewed for a documentary
about British Gangsters in 2014,
Courtney spoke of the damage it did to his reputation.
I was actually nicked with a bent copper and the truth being
I was actually arrested with a bent copper.
It was resolved but someone for his own personal reasons
decided to go well I think Courtney's a grass.'
It weren't right, it altered my little life,
so for one person in particular,
yeah he did actually put a little stain on me and it hurt.
As you can imagine if you are a grass,
if you are an informant and it publicly comes out that you are
an informant, you're in a lot of danger.
So, Courtney decides to not only film the meeting,
but he then tapes Austin Warnes saying that it was
totally prefabricated that he just needed a favour.
And the fact that Dave Courtney had decided to help him out,
I can't remember the exact words, but it basically
gave Dave Courtney a clear defence.
The fact that he had nothing to do with it
and he was just playing at it really.
At that point, the lab reports came back confirming
that the drugs found in the car were fake
and the planted drugs were real.
Finally, Kim James' nightmare was over.
But for Austin Warnes, it was just beginning.
I went to Austin Warnes' house and arrested him.
He was very flippant. He was very
didn't think we were a threat to him.
Quite rude, to be honest, quite blatantly he was going
to be going home that night in his world.
He was going to be taken to police station and he was going
to be interviewed and that would be, that's it.
We didn't have any evidence.
But what we did do is give a full disclosure
of what we knew and what took place.
And as a result of that, his whole world fell apart
because he knew then he was going to prison.
He knew he was going to get charged.
And over the course of two days of interviews with him,
he finally admitted his part in the actual whole operation.
It all ended up at the Old Bailey.
There's a bit of a funny side to it. Courtney is a character.
He turns up dressed up as a court jester, a couple of times,
just to make light of it.
And they all appeared at the Old Bailey,
that's Jonathan Rees, Austin Warnes and Simon James
and all got custodial sentences.
The operation to catch Southern Investigations and
Austin Warnes in the act was deemed an early success
for CIB3 and proved that the change in strategy
in countering corruption was working.
It's a case that sticks in my mind because of all the
the whole thing involving an innocent mother and child
for what? A couple of thousand quid.
I think that's what he was getting paid and the fact that he's
you know, here he is a police officer and without him,
that would never have taken place.
But that example just shows you how audacious
within the parameters of the law that CIB3 were
able to build a strategy that turned the tables
on the corrupt cop and the corruptors, Rees and Fillery,
to the point where they had nowhere to go,
and they went to prison.
I think an officer who becomes corrupt,
that is the final straw, you can't get any worse.
You take an oath when you become a police officer.
The public expect you to perform your duty without fear
and also without prejudice and certainly without any corruption
because the public look on the police in the main,
the public look on the police as those people
they turn to when they're in trouble.
Because you are in that position of trust.
You've been given a warrant card, which gives you
power over the liberty of people, the power of entry.
It gives you so much power over the normal citizen.
And if you are inclined to be corrupt or to abuse those powers
I do actually believe that's the worst kind
of abuse of power that you can get.
It's incredibly damaging.
Every officer swears the oath when they join the police
and to actually take that step against that oath
is a huge issue and causes massive damage
to not only them and their families,
but other officers and the whole organisation in general.
You are policing by consent and the minute that gets eroded,
it takes a nanosecond to lose that and a century to regain it.
Dave Wood and his team were focusing their efforts
on a different part of London.
The intelligence gathered pointed to corruption
in one branch of 'the flying squad',
the Met's specialist unit that dealt with armed robbery.
At this time in the 1990s, the Metropolitan Police
had divided flying squad operations into four areas of
London and the East London branch of the flying squad
was based at Rigg Approach.
Rigg Approach had been thought of as suspect for some time,
and once again, it was decided in order to get hard evidence
to catch cops red-handed, at it,
that they would have to mount a sting operation.
Operation Brunei was interesting.
It had a combination of players which were...
one was a serving cop, two were former cops and a criminal.
The criminal was Michael Taverner.
Now, what this individual wanted to do was to basically
rip off other criminals and steal their drugs,
and he was trying to find a way of doing that.
Intelligence was showing that Taverner
had a corrupt relationship with a suspect detective
called Kevin Garner, who had recently left the Met on the
grounds of ill health to avoid exposure of any wrongdoing.
However, there was another serving officer that CIB3 knew
whose identity was unknown and they were desperate to nail.
CIB3 knew that Taverner was planning a potentially
violent drug theft, but they didn't know where or
when that would take place.
So, they took matters into their own hands.
So, the plan that CIB3 came up with is to feed
false intelligence into the system.
So CIB3, they nurtured the relationships within
Taverner's group and fed Intelligence into
Taverner's associates that there was a stash of cannabis
in a flat in Silvertown,
and that was being stored by another criminal.
This type of proactive sting operation was a first for CIB3.
They hoped that the information would get back to Taverner
and from there he would engage with Garner and the
unknown serving cop to coordinate the stealing of the drugs.
CIB3 had put cameras outside the flat so they could film
people going in and they'd put cameras inside the flat and
microphones in order to film the drugs being found and taken.
With 24/7 surveillance on the flat,
CIB3 had to play the waiting game.
Their strategy went to plan as Taverner fed the information
he received into a Rigg Approach detective
called Terry McGuinness.
So, once Taverner had heard that from his associates,
he then tasks McGuinness as a serving cop
who he knew would then contact Garner.
And then a third player came in, a guy called Green.
And those three, that trio was going to be the means
by which Taverner could steal what he saw,
and thought was a criminal stash of drugs.
In reality, CIB3 had hired a flat in Silvertown.
They'd put 80 kilogrammes of cannabis hidden within the flat,
which was unoccupied.
And they just waited to see what happened.
They had observations.
The whole of the flat was bugged with video
and with microphones, and lo and behold,
the three of them turned up McGuinness, Garner and Green.
They went tooled up with weapons because they didn't know
whether there was going to be anyone in the flat
who would put up a fight to protect the drugs or not.
So, they went up the stairs.
There was a camera hidden in an electric plug socket
in the wall that was filming everything
and picking up the conversation.
And as they searched the flats looking for the drugs,
they eventually found 80,000 pounds worth of cannabis
in a cabinet.
They put it into it was already in bags,
and they carried the bags out of the flat,
picked up on film with the hidden camera of CIB3
and that was it.
They dispersed and then CIB3
had got the evidence they wanted.
Taverner and his associates had taken the bait.
But now CIB3 had a crucial decision to make.
So, McGuinness, Garner and Green, they leave the flat,
they've got the 80 kilogrammes of cannabis,
they put it in the boot of the car.
Operationally, the was - do we swoop on them now or not?
Now, an operational decision was made at that time
not to arrest them at the scene.
The reason being for that is it could quite be a good
explanation for certainly McGuinness who was
a serving cop, that actually all he was doing
was he had intelligence that the drugs were in that flat
and he was taking them back to the police station
for safekeeping and investigation.
So, that decision was to let them run.
CIB3 kept surveillance on Garner,
McGuinness and Green and they didn't disappoint.
So, they then leave the scene,
they've got the drugs in the boot of the car,
and they then take it to a house
which is linked to the Taverner's network.
That time that was built in by CIB3, created the opportunity
for that evidence to be gathered and it was the last
jigsaw puzzle piece that meant an arrest could be made
and the wiggle room was completely limited.
The interesting point though was that 80kg of cannabis
were taken and was stored and taken by
McGuinness, Green and Garner but only 56 were retrieved.
And my understanding is they were never found
what... the drugs that were missing.
On arrest, McGuinness, Garner and Green
were brought in for questioning.
Green claimed he knew nothing of the corrupt plan
whilst Garner and McGuinness would only answer, 'No comment.'
That is until they were shown the video footage,
CIB3 had captured.
It's not uncommon, which is the legal right of people
who have been interviewed to make no comment.
However, in this case, whilst McGuiness and Garner
made no comment on early interviews,
once they were shown the video evidence and the surveillance
of them entering the flat and taking the drugs away,
the writing was on the wall for them.
They could not find a plausible defence to that.
So, how do you reduce your sentence? You turn supergrass.
So, they both turned supergrass and between them,
the two of them gave a lot of information to CIB3
about a lot of different operations that they'd been
corrupt operations flying squad officers had been involved in.
They admitted to a total of 19 offences of corruption,
stretching back to 1991, ranging from stealing
hundreds of thousands of pounds to fabricating evidence
following Operation Brunei, the Met launched Operation Ethiopia,
an investigation into corruption in the flying squad.
It was the largest investigation of its kind since the 1970s.
One of the most compelling cases of corruption
that came out of it involved a career criminal
called Hector Harvey and the robbery of
1.4 million pounds from a security van in 1995.
Hector Harvey's choice of crime was armed robbery.
He liked to get on the pavement,
he liked to follow Security express or post office vans
that were loaded with cash.
And in those days, people were being paid in their pay packet
on a Friday in cash, and that had to be taken around London.
And Hector Harvey and his criminal associates
saw opportunities of intervening as that cash is being
transported across London to take it for their own ends.
So, they would be on the pavement armed taking that money.
The man responsible for originally tracking down
and arresting Hector Harvey was a former Metropolitan police
wrestling champion called Albert Patrick.
Hector Harvey was a prolific armed robber.
He was identified after we had arrested a
team and an inside agent in East Ham.
And we got the word Hector Selector, that he was a principal,
he was an organiser.
He was a man on the bike with a gun responsible
for the armed robbery that we were investigating.
An impossible target drove different vehicles,
a hundred miles an hour and you would never know
where he was going to be.
So, it was a very challenging time to put your wits
against Hector Harvey. We identified him.
Hector Harvey was his name, Hector Byron Harvey.
And he had previous convictions,
and he had a safe house in South London.
However, after investigating Hector Harvey
over the course of several months,
they eventually tracked him down to an address in Luton.
Fortunately, we had enough evidence to
secure a search warrant, and, in the end,
we had enough evidence to charge him.
He was arrested, charged, trial at Snaresbrook Crown Court
convicted, got 15 years.
His barrister says he wants to speak to me.
I did speak to him, and he said,
'How do I get my 15 years reduced?'
Well, you better tell me what else you've been up to.
And he did, and I've registered him as an informant,
and he told us about what he'd done
and named people in South London.
For his cooperation Hector Harvey's sentence
was reduced from 15 to 12 years,
but Hector the Selector, didn't stop there.
He was now registered informant.
And whilst he was serving his time,
he managed to exploit this relationship
to commit perhaps his most audacious robbery yet.
Hector Harvey was acting as an informant for
a couple of officers who are based at Rigg Approach.
And he told them that there was to be a robbery taking place
and there was to be a dry run, a rehearsal of the robbery
on a security van that was going to happen a week before.
And he persuaded the officers to get him out of prison
to take part in the dry run the rehearsal.
Now amazingly permission was given to get Hector Harvey
out of prison to take part in the dry run.
This could be a film; you couldn't make it up.
We've got an individual, Hector Harvey,
who is profound criminal and he's serving
her Majesty's pleasure in prison, and he's been involved
in armed robberies throughout his career.
He managed to convince the Flying Squad
that if they let him out for a week, because he'd heard
there was going to be a post office robbery,
he could go on the dry run, get the information intelligence
of this robbery, and then feed that back to
the Flying Squad so they can intervene.
I mean, is that a realistic proposition?
But the Flying Squad bought it.
It went up to a very high level at Scotland Yard itself
before approval was given for this
very, very unusual, if not totally rare event.
Having made the decision to release Hector Harvey
as an informant to gather intelligence on the dry run,
it wasn't long before Flying Squad realised,
he had an ulterior motive.
He was indeed allowed out of prison to take part in
what the handlers had been told by him was a dry run,
a rehearsal, but instead, the double cross took place
because in fact, it wasn't a rehearsal, it was the real thing.
For some reason, Rigg Approach did not keep Hector Harvey
under control under surveillance on the dry run.
They let him out and let him run loose and what he did do
was a live armed robbery on a Security Express van
that was taking cash from a Barclay's branch.
It was about £1.4 million.
The plan that Harvey came up with, I mean it is film stuff,
it's creative, he wanted to put fear into an individual
to make sure that they were so scared
that they would go along with the plan
of robbing this van of £1.4 million.
What he did was he had a relationship with the driver
of the Security Express van, and he created a situation
where he strapped a false bomb around the body
of the driver who kept that as a secret
from his colleague who also sat in the front of the cab.
Once the money had been picked up from Barclays,
the driver said to his colleague, I need to tell you this,
my loved one has been taken hostage by the criminals.
I've got this bomb around my body.
We've got microphones all around me.
So, the criminals who want to rob this van can hear
anything that we say, and we discuss.
And if I don't go along with it and you don't go along with it,
I've got potential of this bomb going off,
but more importantly, I've got a loved one
that's been taken hostage.
That was the fear factor to put into the other colleague
to ensure that they could then steal the money.
Hector Harvey on a motorcycle goes in front of the van.
They go off to a quiet location and the £1,400,000 is stolen.
So, a large amount of money and the flying squad
obviously were very, very embarrassed to say the least,
they'd allowed someone out of prison to take part in this.
So, the scene is that Hector Harvey has basically
participated in an armed robbery while he is on
compassionate leave from prison for a week, couldn't make it up.
He managed to put, of the 1.4 million, there was a slice up.
So, he needed to give a payoff to the driver
who was obviously the inside man.
He gets £200,000.
Hector Harvey, he hides £47,000 at his mother's house,
he wanted that for when he eventually was freed from prison
But things didn't go to plan for Harvey.
He was arrested and questioned at Edmonton Police Station
and predictably, he denied knowing that the robbery
was going to happen.
But the officers investigating were more interested in
where the money was than the truth behind the robbery.
He was briefed on what to say in interview
so as to avoid prosecution and was subject to intimidation
and threats by corrupt officers who wanted to
get their hands on the cash.
kill him or deal with him in some way.
And in fact, while he'd been out,
he'd found a grenade attached to his motorbike
and if he'd started the motorbike, the pin on the grid
would've come out and he would've been killed.
Hector Harvey had no choice but to tell detectives
where the stolen cash was.
Unfortunately for him, all that money that he thought
was going to be distributed was actually snivelled up
by corrupt cops.
The £200k was divvied up.
The £47k was stolen by a serving police officer,
and what you had is the corrupt cops travelling around London
trying to track down slices of the £1.4 million
with Hector Harvey, who's the architect of
the armed robbery, sitting in his prison cell.
Involved in the corrupt activity was Kevin Garner,
who was responsible for collecting the stolen cash
and sharing it with the other corrupt officers.
He confessed to his part when arrested as part
of Operation Brunei and gave further information
on corruption at Rigg Approach.
He had stolen the £200,000 that was being held
for the inside man at Security Express.
He'd stolen his stash of money and that money had
been distributed amongst other flying squads officers.
Terry McGuiness agreed with what had happened,
and he also gave information.
Garner in particular, had been particularly friendly
with a Sergeant at the flying squad called Eamonn Harris
and Garner said, 'Harris, although just a Detective Sergeant,
he ran things, he ran the flying squad.'
There were senior officers above him, but they didn't matter.
It was Harris who organised things
and Harris organised the corruption.
Operation Brunei and the resulting Operation Ethiopia
resulted in several flying squad officers being
sent down for corruption.
But it was Hector Harvey and his audacity
that played an important role in CIB3,
getting involved and making the arrests.
The ironic twist of all this story is that Hector Harvey,
he gets released from prison.
The armed robbery has not been solved,
because it's been supervised by corrupt cops one presumes,
he sees that Security Express are offering a £50,000 reward,
and he thinks, I'll get some of that action
because he ends up potentially in his mind, thinking,
'I've committed the robbery, I've stolen the money,
it's not been solved, and I can top it up with a £50k reward.'
So, Hector Harvey decided to approach them and tell them all.
He met a company director who was himself
an ex-detective who was horrified at what Hector Harvey
was telling him about how the flying squad
had taken some of the money and that there'd been
an inside man on the job, et cetera.
And he, that's the Security Express company director,
went to Scotland Yard itself, spoke to someone high up
and complained bitterly about what had happened
and how no action had been taken.
They were furious, so they then decided they were going
to threaten litigation against the Met
and the whole story unravelled,
and it was that intelligence which was able to be fed
into CIB3 and the revelations by Hector Harvey.
That meant that all the people who have been corrupt
and have taken money illegitimately
were going to be investigated and arrested.
With Garner and McGuinness, both going down for seven years,
CIB3 had claimed the scalps of two more bent coppers,
but as they were to find out their fight against corruption
in the Met had only just begun.