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 that 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.
In the late 1990s CIB3 carried out one of their most
high-profile cases investigating a team of hard drinking
rogue detectives who called themselves the groovy gang.
Known as Operation Russia,
the case starts with the story of Neil Putnam,
an ambitious detective who wanted to join
the perceived elite of the southeast regional crime squad.
Putnam always wanted to join the police.
He joined very young.
It was his ambition and his words, not mine.
When he joined, he said he wanted to serve London
and give something back.
He went on, he was a successful police officer,
and he was a successful detective, but his main ambition
was to tackle the top echelon of criminals.
And again, in his words, he wanted to join
the regional crime squad that he considered to be the elite
and the best of the best.
So, he went on to join the South East
regional crime squad at Dulwich.
But on his very first day with the groovy gang,
Putnam was to realise that this was no ordinary crime team.
He was taken out for drinks with the team and to be honest,
that was sort of quite normal practice.
But in his case, he was asked did he have any debts,
and somebody made the comment that his debt
would soon disappear on the regional crime squad
and that he would be looked after.
Again, in Putnam's words were that he sort of read
between the lines on that and he did wonder
at that stage whether or not corruption was involved.
Putnam's instinct was correct, and it wasn't long
before the charismatic and self-styled leader of
the groovy gang, Detective Constable Bob Clark
was asking him for favours.
There was information from an informant
that there was going to be a drop of cannabis,
but Clark had asked Putnam whether or not he had a
holdall he could borrow, and Putnam gave him his holdall
and he didn't ask why, I don't think.
But there came a time a couple of days later
where Putnam was given £300 just thrust in his hand
by Clark saying, that's for you and he took it.
I mean from memory, Putnam says he was surprised,
but he took it.
And at that point there is really no going back
because he had discovered in the equipment room
at East Dulwich at the squad office, his holdall,
and within his holdall, he had discovered traces of cannabis.
It was that point; I think he realised that Clark or
somebody had stolen some of the cannabis that had been
dropped that night and the £300 was
for being blunt - was his cut.
And things were about to get a whole lot worse.
Clark and Putnam were involved in a police raid
on a local drugs deal at a golf course in Croydon,
where Putnam witness Clark placed a quantity of
the illegal drugs they had seized into another large holdall.
At that point, Clark asked him if he knew a quiet spot,
which he knew the area and I believe it was a wood
that they both went to, and it was pretty clear
that some of the cannabis was stolen by Clark.
The following morning, Putnam went to Clark's flat
where he was handed the white envelope.
He realised that was containing cash.
He went to a quiet spot that he knew as a kid,
and he counted that, and it was £2,000.
So, at that point, he's now in real trouble because here
he has witnessed taking cannabis from a hundred kilos stash.
He's then not only witnessed that taking,
he's then received his share £2,000.
Putnam was now becoming embroiled in serious police
corruption and there was seemingly no turning back.
Taking his cue from Clark and the rest of the groovy gang
he had now begun stealing for himself.
The behaviour of the corrupt team reached new lows
when they raided a property on a tip off in search of drugs.
In the flat, there was a load of cash.
Putnam says his words, that there was cash everywhere.
Putnam had now become stealing for himself because
nobody really trusted Clark to give, for want of a better word,
divvy up the money fairly.
To me that spells out that corruption
There is no owner amongst thieves.
What appeared to have started out is a couple of people
stealing from tip-offs from informants to then
others stealing amongst themselves.
They were all stealing.
So, it then almost becomes part of the norm.
The corruption becomes part of the norm of the activity
of that particular team at East Dulwich.
The story then takes a twist.
Bob Clark was known as something of a maverick,
and along with partner Chris Drury had a reputation
for employing unorthodox tactics.
But the relationship Clark developed with
one of his informers, big time cocaine dealer,
Eve Fleckney, crossed the line in more ways than one.
Robert Clark was suspected of being involved in the
protection of Eve Fleckney because he was her handler.
He handled her as an informant.
It also emerged during the CIB3 operation,
the two were more than officer and informant.
They were in fact, lovers.
Fleckney had passed information or tipped off Clark
about another drug dealer called Guildford John.
I take it he lived in Guildford,
that had possession of a load of cannabis, £27,000 worth.
And Clark and Drury turned up and took the drugs from him,
but they didn't arrest him.
They let him keep whatever cash he had,
but they took the full amount of the drugs and off they
carried them, and he wasn't arrested
and there was no further action taken against him.
However, Guilford John's involvement didn't end there
and a year later on, another tip-off partner and his team
raided what they thought was his safe house.
So, a year later, the Southeast Regional Crime Squad
received the same tip off that Guildford John
was in possession of cannabis, and it was believed to be
in a house in the countryside, which was believed to be,
by the police, his safe house.
Putnam then led the team to that address, to steal the drugs
Unfortunately, it wasn't Guildford John's house,
it was his friend's house who had I think
about two or three ounces of cannabis for personal use.
There was no stash, it wasn't a safe house.
Putnam was adamant that drugs were hidden there somewhere,
and he started threatening this guy
and he started making threats that he'd bring
heavy plant gear in to dig up the garden.
But it became apparent, I suspect to Putnam that actually
they'd made a big mistake here because this guy was just
a happy little soldier in a house and all he did
was know Guildford John.
Possibly that's where he got his cannabis from, who knows?
And he had £800, which was him and his partner's savings.
And it came to the point where I think they accepted
that they got it wrong, the police and then Putnam said
that he'd keep the £800 and let the guy keep his
two or three ounces of cannabis
and off they went and never to be seen again.
By now, Eve Fleckney's drug dealing,
and the subsequent suspicions of corruption
started to attract attention from soon to be
CIB3 Chief, Dave Wood.
At this point in time, Fleckney was becoming on the radar
as a significant drug dealer and known to Dave Wood
who was the branch commander at Surbiton.
And that meant he basically was in charge of that office
and one of his DI's was Martin Bridger.
They became concerned, considerably concerned
because for want of a better word, their jobs kept
blowing out against Fleckney.
Every time they tried to get any evidence or anything,
they couldn't, and we know now know why;
because she was getting tipped off.
It was clear their work was being compromised,
and if Wood and Bridger were to move against Fleckney,
they would need to launch a covert proactive investigation.
So, Dave Wood took the decision to move Martin Bridger
and a small team away from the Surbiton office.
He didn't know where the threat was,
was the threat in his team? He didn't know.
There was a threat from Clark at that stage.
I think there came a point where it did become apparent
that Fleckney was an informant for Clark.
So, at this stage, CIB3 had established that there was a
relationship between Robert Clark and Eve Fleckney,
but what was needed was proper strong evidence
that was going to stand up in court and that was
always the case with CIB3.
They had to get that evidence,
catch people red-handed preferably.
So, Martin Bridger led an operation, quite a significant
and detailed surveillance operation offensive,
against Eve Fleckney because of course he was
operating covertly with his team.
Nobody knew what he was doing.
So therefore, and he left no trace in relation to
general police inquiries that he was interested in
Fleckney, and he built up a case against her.
The first port of call for trying to understand
what was going on was to bug Fleckney's house.
The ongoing surveillance of Fleckney
would provide Bridger's team with a valuable lead.
So, out of all the surveillance on Fleckney,
Martin Bridger's team became aware that one of
the persons that she was supplying to was Guildford John.
He was carrying drugs from a big-time dealer in London
out to Surrey when he was stopped and arrested.
And at that stage, he made the remark regarding the fact
was - were they going to take his drugs and let him go
because that's what happened the last time.
And the officers in the car didn't know what
he was talking about, but asked him, well last time,
what do you mean, last time?
He then said that he'd been stopped by two officers
previously a few years before, and the two officers,
instead of taking him in, had taken drugs
from the boot of his car worth £70,000 he said.
Martin Bridger and his team decided to act
on Guildford John's revelations.
Martin did listen to what he said.
So, it's at this point Bridger's suspicion was almost confirmed
in that yes, there was corrupt activity.
It was reported then to the Complaints Investigation Bureau,
CIB2 but the East Dulwich office became aware
that they were under investigation.
They made a pact to say nothing and deny it in its entirety.
Who would believe a drug dealer?
Would a jury believe a drug dealer
against 4 cops giving evidence?
It was just unheard of to be honest,
and the inquiry just diminished it.
It stopped because they couldn't take it any further.
But they could however arrest Fleckney.
Her time in the fast lane as an untouchable drug dealer
protected by the police was coming to an end.
At the time of her arrest, she actually said to the officers,
I believe it was Martin Bridger,
'What's happening?' 'What's going on?'
'Have I got to go to the police station?'
'What do you mean I've got to go to the police station?'
She was clearly taken back and completely surprised
the fact that she'd been arrested,
which goes to show that her basic understanding
was that would never happen because here was Bob Clark,
serving officer, protecting her.
But it did happen, and she was duly charged and
prosecuted and then she was sentenced to 15 years custodial.
But Eve Fleckney had no intention of serving 15 years.
Dave Wood was now leading the newly formed CIB3
and a few weeks into her sentence,
she reached out to him suggesting she was willing to talk.
Shortly after her sentence was delivered,
she made a call from prison to Dave Wood. s.
So, Dave Wood went along and actually interviewed her
himself and she revealed what was extremely disturbing
catalogue of how that she was protected
by police officers and namely Clark.
Dave Wood says his view, she was in love with Clark
and how that the officers would, she tipped them off,
they would intercept drugs, they would either steal
the whole amount and let the person go
or they would steal some of them.
They stole cash and then Clark gave her the stolen
drugs back and she recycled them,
and she was quite happy to reveal her own
whole involvement in that for a reduced sentence.
What, in those days was commonly known as a supergrass.
In response to Fleckney's allegations,
CIB3 formed Operation Russia and promptly arrested
Clark and Drury,
but the pair weren't as forthcoming as Fleckney.
On arrest they made no comment to all of the allegations,
which to be honest you'd expect because here they were,
police officers, and here were CIB3 alleging that they'd stole
a load of drugs and it was using the word of
a convicted drug dealer, not only a convicted drug dealer,
but a substantial convicted drug dealer.
15 years is a long time.
Dave Wood turned his attention to other
members of their team, including Neil Putnam.
They went to Putnam's house, took Putnam outside into the
garden and described how they were after Clark and Drury.
They were the main targets, so Putnam had a problem.
Once in custody, Putnam turned immediately and
followed Fleckney in turning Supergrass.
Having recently become a born-again Christian,
it appeared he wanted to come clean,
and whilst his reputation as a detective was in tatters,
his value as a material witness of CIB3 was priceless.
It was the icing on the cake.
It was a jewel in the crown because here was a person that,
yes, he was a cop, but he was willing to admit
his offences that he was involved in and actually corroborate
what Fleckney had said because at the end of the day,
Fleckney was a drug dealer and a convicted drug dealer.
Putnam wasn't. He was a cop, but he was a corrupt cop.
However, Chief Superintendent John Yates,
who was overseeing the case, had his suspicions that Putnam
was holding back vital information.
He decided to lean on him.
Yates, he was of the opinion,
and I think his team were as well.
Putnam was holding back.
He was talking about Drury and Clark,
but he wasn't talking about any other officers.
So, John Yates made the decision that he would
actually remove him from the protected custody.
So that in effect meant that he would remove him
from the protected witnesses it was in those days.
That system, which also meant his wife as well
because his wife was being assisted in the witness scheme,
protected witness scheme, and that he would be put
back into mainstream policing.
He couldn't expect any reduction in sentence
because he wasn't telling the full truth, and he certainly
wouldn't want to be in a prison system being a corrupt cop.
They went back to Putnam and said, 'If you are after
becoming an informant for us, a supergrass for us,
you must tell us all, everything, that's part of the deal.'
'You get dealt with leniently for the corruption that
you've been involved in, but you have to tell everything.'
It was an impossible choice for Putnam, protect his friends
or lose protection for himself and his family.
So, he then made the choice,
and I don't think he really had a choice personally, to tell all.
Now, CIB3 had two supergrasses to
provide evidence against the rogue detectives.
In all five serving officers, Clark, and Drury
and three others were convicted of corruption.
So, in that sense it was seen as a success;
five officers down all to a successful CIB3 operation.
However, whilst Clark and Drury served out
their lengthy sentences,
there was a twist on their release from prison.
Some years later, Clark and Drury decided
to appeal against their convictions and sentences,
which had been quite hefty.
I believe Clark actually served 10 years of the 12 years,
and I think a Drury served eight years.
But there came a point after they'd been released where
the court of appeal in 2010 ruled that there was exploitatory
material that had been withheld at the trial
and may have affected their conviction.
Therefore, the judge ordered the retrial.
The retrial collapsed when Eve Fleckney having already
served most of her prison sentence, refused to stand
as a witness against Bob Clark.
She also intimated that she'd been pressurised
to turn supergrass in the first trial.
The main way that Clark and Drury won their appeal
was because Eve Fleckney
flatly refused to give any kind of evidence.
She withdrew her evidence entirely
saying she'd been forced into it.
She'd always been a reluctant witness at the actual trial,
but at the appeal it was made clear she was never
ever going to appear against Clark and Drury. Why?
One will never know what her motives were.
As to how I feel about that, I think it's best
to adopt the same answers that
Robert Clark gave to his police questioners; No comment.
A critical factor around much of corruption
is the relationship between officers and informants.
In the 1990s, the regulations weren't as clear as they are now
and sometimes the relationships between informants
and handlers weren't very clearly defined.
If you had an informant, you should always meet
that informant with another officer.
Often not often, but sometimes that didn't occur,
so therefore this relationship can build up and almost
the Stockholm situation can become apparent
where a handler becomes too involved
or too close to that informant.
The problem with the handling of informants
is you want to push the boundaries to glean
as much information and intelligence as you can
to then investigate it.
And in doing so, you can't do that 10 foot away
from the informant in terms of relationship.
You've got to get on with them, you've got to go
for a beer with them, you've got to go for a curry with 'em,
and therefore you start actually becoming friendly.
They would meet up, they'd go for drinks,
they'd go for food together,
and that's where the information exchange would happen.
It was often the relationships between
a detective and an informant.
There was a one-to-one relationship that
nobody else could be part of.
'I'll go and speak to my informant.'
'My informant tells me this.'
So, there would be a very close relationship
between informants and detective, which was sacrosanct,
and nobody had access, often, to the informant.
But you have to have strict boundaries,
and I think it starts to go astray when people
some detectives would meet an informant, not record it,
start to bypass the regulations, boundaries get blurred.
The officer got too close to the informant
and that's when it all started to go wrong.
If you don't play by the book, it's all out there for grabs.
There was one particular case with a DC
that was running an informant, and the payments
were not necessarily going back to the informant.
They were being shared
between the informant and the officer.
It was very much open to corruption
because where the informants were being paid,
it did cross over into the other way round
where the informants would then pay the police officers
themselves to turn a blind eye or to not
notice what they were doing.
And this could be with low level
and higher-level type crimes as well.
The power games between the criminal who's trying to
find a corrupt cop and the corrupt cop themselves.
The dynamic between the two is fascinating.
They're vying for position and power.
There's no winners ever going to be out of it
because inevitably it's all going to
go horribly wrong, they'll get caught
and they're playing games with each other.
They're hugging each other, they're having a pint,
but behind the scenes they don't trust each other
and they're just looking out for the bullets that are
going to fly over the counter.
If they want to live like that,
good luck to 'em, I don't want to live like that.
99.9% of informants being run in the early 90s were run
very, very professionally.
But what we do know now, not from just
this investigation, Russia, but from other CIB investigations,
there were some bad apples.
In early 2000, CIB3 led an investigation into a detective
with links to drug dealers, money launderers
and gang members who became involved in a plot to kidnap,
and murder an associate who tried to rip off the wrong people
Operation Greyhound was probably in terms of creativity
on the investigation strategy, this was right up there.
Operation Greyhound was an investigation into Martin Morgan
He'd been at Stoke Newington.
That was a hotbed of corruption at that time in
North London and then he joined SERCS, that's
the South East Regional Crime squad.
So, he'd been around.
His previous experience as a detective
in operating serious crime was pretty admirable.
He was a very good detective, he got results.
He knew undercover policing, he knew covert policing,
he knew proactive policing.
He was an individual that actually people looked up to.
But he had a side to him, which was obviously the dark side.
And when you got to see his lifestyle,
he was in the category of those who wanted a lifestyle
that he couldn't fund off his own salary.
He'd long been suspected of corruption,
but the problem was getting evidence against him.
The old CIB2 tended to be reactive, not proactive like CIB3.
So, they looked back at crimes or where there had been
allegations of corruption.
But of course, it's very difficult to get evidence of something
that's already happened, especially when people don't talk.
So, he'd been under the radar basically,
but known as being involved in corruption.
One of the criminals that Morgan was suspected of having
a corrupt relationship with was a man called Robert Kean.
Kean was a well-connected criminal
operating at the top level.
The fact that he was able to nurture corrupt contacts
within the Met, I mean, that's not a walk in the park.
You've got to know how to do that.
And he was on the payroll, Martin Morgan, his job.
He was the cop on the inside providing intelligence
to the criminal, giving them heads up when they
need to worry about things and basically
doing a corrupt job for corrupt payments.
Where CIB2 had previously failed to
get evidence against Morgan, it was hoped
CIB3's ability to mount proactive operations
would prove to be the game changer.
So, they started doing surveillance on him,
tapped his phones and even had a bug in his car.
They gradually found evidence not only of the relationship
with Kean but found that Kean was wanting Morgan
to get information about another criminal
called Ashley Sansom, who was a money launderer.
Sansom was facilitating the purchase of controlled drugs
from Spain, and he made the mistake of running away
with the money, I believe with half a million pounds sterling.
And of course, Kean wanted the money back,
but to get that he had to trace Sansom.
Kean needed to find out where Sansom was
and basically level the score.
He had a co-conspirator in a guy called Carl Wood
who also felt he had been blighted and
been ripped off by Sansom.
So here you had at least two, if not more,
people who wanted to get hold of Sansom pretty damn quick.
How are they going to do that?
Well, the only way they can do that is to pull on a
favour of Martin Morgan and see whether or not he
could get some intelligence as to where Sansom was.
CIB3 got wind of it, so they mounted an investigation
to protect Sansom and also convict Martin Morgan, Kean and
Carl Wood and anyone else that wanted to join the gang.
It was Roger Critchell's job to plan and execute the operation.
I got called in because I had quite a lot of experience
in covert policing and using covert techniques to lay
an evidence trail for Martin Morgan or whoever to follow
to find Ashley Sansom.
My specific task was to come up with an idea or come up
with how we were going to lay an evidence trail.
Staying one step ahead of an experienced detective
like Martin Morgan was always going to
present a real challenge to CIB3.
To go against a person of Morgan's experienced knowledge
and in fairness, ability, is very difficult,
because you've got to second guess what Morgan is thinking
and that was extremely difficult and was challenging.
Now, Morgan was a clever man.
He took careful steps to avoid being associated
with the attempt to get Sansom.
And so, he had two detectives that he worked with
in his own police station who he enrolled to be part of
the team to try and find out where Sansom was.
Martin Morgan knew that Samson had a safe deposit box
in Edgeware, North London.
So, he sent two officers down there with a false
search warrant to look through his belongings.
It was hoped that this would coax Samson out of hiding.
However, with CIB3 tracking their every move,
it provided them with a unique opportunity to use Sansom
to start laying an evidence trail against Morgan.
He put Sansom into the bank shortly after the
search warrant was executed.
And the reason for doing that was to get him on CCTV
so that Martin Morgan, when he went to view
whether Sansom's still around, he would see him.
We knew that Morgan would get hold of copies of the CCTV
showing Sansom going into the bank
to check his safety deposit box.
And then we would get Sansom to phone Morgan's office
when we knew that Morgan wasn't there to ask
why his safety deposit box had been searched
and to leave a contact number of a hotel down in Surrey.
That's outside of the Met area, that means in the future
it reduces the wriggle room that an appeal might be
that they said they're legitimately in a hotel
or in the Met area.
They would have to find a good reason why on duty
Morgan was in a hotel room in Surrey.
That would be difficult for him.
We had decided that we would get rooms,
one room that we would make up to look like Sansom
was using it, using items of his clothing,
using items of his personal effects, etc, etc.
So, anybody going into that room would genuinely
think that Ashley Sansom was staying there.
And in the room next door, we were CIB3
had the room bugged and were monitoring through sound and
vision everything that was going on in this hotel room.
It was extremely important to be able to record in that room
because without it, we wouldn't have the evidence,
we'd have just somebody turning up.
So, with CIB3 having laid the trap, the only question was
whether Morgan and his criminal associates would fall into it.
If you're acting in a corrupt manner, I think generally
you are looking over your shoulder all the time.
Trying to speculate what that must feel like,
how do lay in bed straight at night?
When you know that you are in the spotlight,
and you are being investigated, you may be being followed,
but you will know those tactics, so you become
aware of how to protect yourself.
So even though you are under investigation,
you'll know that somebody might be listening to your phone,
somebody might be following you, they may be looking
at your CCTV outside where you live or where you go
to the gym or whatever.
So, you know some of the tactics, but you also know that
the resources are infinite and if the organisation actually
do want to catch you out and do want to bring you to justice,
those resources are huge, and they can do it.
So, it must be a very, very difficult position to be in.
So, I think the fear of being caught
and looking over your shoulder must be dreadful.
I can only imagine that they would feel sick to the stomach,
that they would be panicking, they would be paranoid,
that they were under surveillance.
They would feel total and utter isolation
because they're not only just betraying themselves,
a) they're betraying themselves,
b) They're betraying their colleagues,
and c) they're going to betray their families,
because if you put your job in jeopardy as a corrupt officer
and the likelihood is that other detectives will be investigating
you, that's scary in itself.
If you are caught and you're found guilty, your house is gone,
the family's security is gone, your marriage is gone,
everything's gone for what? That's what I never understand.
For what? For peanut bits of money or for your own ego?
I have never ever understood that relationship.
Why you think for one minute that a villain
will stick up for you because they won't.
It must be an awful place to be in, the way you know
that at any moment in time, you can have a knock
on your door and the likes of myself standing there
to actually take you, basically take you to jail.
However, I also have got a theory that they become
so comfortable in that lifestyle that they become completely
oblivious to that because that is their new lifestyle,
and they think they're completely untouchable
and they beget a false confidence in their own activities.
And thank goodness they do because when you're
investigating them, you want 'em to be cocky.
You want 'em to be overconfident because then
their guard goes down and we can deploy some
really smart tactics to detect them, gather the evidence
to prove or disprove their criminality and if we prove it,
put them in front of the court and they can grip the rail.
Corrupt detective Martin Morgan, and his criminal
associate Robert Kean, were now firmly in the sights of CIB3
Their plan was to lure Morgan and Kean to a hotel room
in Surrey on the pretence that Sansom was staying there.
Just as CIB3 had hoped Morgan and Kean took the bait
and contacted the hotel using Morgan's police authority
to find out which room he was staying in.
Not long after the hiring of that room, Kean turns up
and they break into the room, Kean,
and they sit there waiting for him.
Not long after that, the two DC's who were the accomplices
of Morgan from the same detective office,
they turned up at the hotel along with Morgan.
I mean, if there was ever any doubt as to whether or not
Martin Morgan was corrupt, up to no good,
as part of this operation.
When he arrived at the hotel in the car park,
he doesn't go through the front entrance.
He acts in a furtive way, a suspicious way.
He acts just like a criminal.
He's put gloves on to protect any forensic fingerprints.
He goes up into the hotel through the fire exit,
evading an awful lot of that CCTV coverage,
and then he makes his entrance into the hotel room.
They see we've planted Sansom's car in the car park,
so they know that they've got the right hotel.
That all adds up with the booking of the room
and it's a waiting game.
What then was witnessed
under the bugging was absolutely shocking.
They start talking about what they're going to do to him,
at which stage Kean basically said that they would
hit him over the head, roll him in the carpet,
put him in the boot of their car from the window
and take him to Norfolk where
there was a farm or something,
and they would get their money back.
And it was at that point where Morgan asked
what would they do if he didn't say anything
about the money and they indicated they would kill him.
Here we had Martin Morgan, he'd sign on duty
at his police station.
He was actively on duty in a hotel room,
being party to a three-way conversation,
where they were plotting to torture, gouge out the eyes
of Sansom when he comes in the hotel room,
torture him in other ways, and then ultimately murder him,
wrap him up in the rug of the hotel room,
take him out of the hotel and put him in a car crusher.
And it was Morgan that said that his mate had a car crusher
down in Plaistow and that they would put
him there to get rid of the body.
Of course, CIB3 was taping all this stuff,
and it was all good hard evidence tying Morgan into it.
I mean the shocking element about all of this is that
you are witnessing from all the bugging,
that an officer who was on duty was part of
a conspiracy to plot to kill someone.
What was clear from the surveillance footage
was that Martin Morgan had earned the respect
of his fellow criminals.
In the hotel room, Kean said to Carl Wood,
'Well, he thinks like us, he's one of us. He's a good guy.'
It is shocking coming from a criminal.
I mean, you would anticipate that Morgan, because of
the type of operations that he was involved in,
would think like have to think like a criminal,
but to actually get the criminal saying that sort of suggests
how they held him, what esteem they held Morgan in.
But of course, it wasn't just respect
that Morgan was working for.
The Kean-Morgan relationship was an interesting one.
Morgan appears to have carried out various favours
for Kean on this occasion.
CIB3 in their surveillance and bugging and so on,
discovered that Morgan was being offered £50,000
as reward for finding Sansom.
£50,000 in those days was a lot of money.
It was well over Morgan's salary, way over his annual salary,
and he decided to go ahead
and work for his paymaster, Robert Kean.
In fact, when we did his investigation on his finances,
he didn't touch his salary for a good 18 months
because he didn't need to.
His salary went straight into the bank and he was living
off the backhanders that he was getting from Kean.
Back at the hotel,
Morgan and Kean were starting to get impatient.
They waited there a good 36 hours,
obviously no one turns up and then they leave.
They do a little passing shot as they walk out through the
car park, and they slash the car tyres of Sansom's car.
We don't know why they did that.
I still don't know to this day what possessed them to do that.
But the random slashing of the car tyre unbeknown to them
gave me a good opportunity because it allowed me to then
get his car tyres replaced using Sansom's credit card.
So, we purchased three tyres for the car and just as we
thought Morgan was notified that the card had been used.
So, we then have Morgan then furthermore taking that
opportunity and the evidence of him actually
monitoring the card and telling Kean.
With evidence mounting against the corrupt Morgan
and his criminal associates, CIB3 were weighing up
when to make their move.
However, when they received intelligence that Kean
was no longer in the country, they were forced into action.
It became known shortly after the use of the credit card
that the main principle Kean was going to flee to Spain,
and he did, he actually left the country and went to Spain
and was subsequently extradited.
So, the arrests were then put in.
The irrefutable evidence inevitably led to
guilty sentences being handed down.
But it was at their sentencing where Morgan's loyalty
to Kean was laid bare for the world to see.
Their sentencing at the Old Bailey was remarkable
and quite unique.
In fact, criminals and their police handlers usually kept
well apart, but Morgan arrived in the same car as Kean.
So, there was quite a scrum as Morgan and
Kean entered the building.
And Morgan to the very end was trying to protect Kean
from this scrum of people.
This was Morgan obeying his master right to the very end.
I mean, from my point of view, the operation
was extremely successful because we were given a task
which was a difficult and challenging task to test whether
or not Morgan was going to do what it was believed
he was going to do.
And that was try and track down using
police powers to find Sansom.
And we proved it and it led to guilty pleas in the end
and he received a significant custodial sentence.
So, it was extremely successful in my mind.
In 1998, at the launch of Operation Ethiopia,
Metropolitan Police Chief Paul Condon told a common
select committee that the force could have as many as
250 corrupt officers within its ranks.
Whilst CIB3 didn't convict anywhere near that number,
the impact of their investigations and indeed the fact
the Ghost Squad existed at all,
certainly left its mark upon the Met.
I mean, if you look back at the operations within CIB3
in its formation after CIB2 and intelligence gathering,
that's a landmark within the history of the Met
and the way at which it tackled corruption.
The legacy of CIB3 is that not only did they put away
behind bars many corrupt officers,
but their whole operation had a deterrent effect.
It put fear amongst detectives that if ever they were tempted
into being corrupt that they could well end up in prison.
Some of the work that CIB3 did in putting out their stings
and taking out some of the individuals became legendary
and it became almost a deterrent for other people to say,
if you are corrupt, this is the length that the police service
will go to get you out.
They will follow you, they will surveil you,
they will listen to your conversations,
and they will tap your phones.
So, I think it was a really good forerunner
for the corruption command.
What it proved was that there was a problem back in 1990,
late 90s, early 2000s.
It was tackled, and it was tackled in a robust way.
So, I think the good thing that's come out of it is nobody
has sat back on their laurels.
People in policing as it's gone through the last 23 years,
they've actually kept their eye on corruption.
And that's why I think we won't see again the scale
of corruption that we had back in the late 90s, early 2000s.
There will always be corruption,
of course, there will, but not on the scale that it was.