The Cartel: The Inside Story of Britain's Biggest Drugs Gang

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Journalist and author Graham Johnson is Mr Smith's business partner and has been leading the negotiations.

Her 40-year-old son Jason (above, left) was in charge of transport; her other son, Ian (above, right), aged 39, was in charge of logistics. Place of safety She was the so-called company secretary. She laundered the money and advised on how to avoid detection. NOTW editor 'spiked paedophilia scoop on Arthur C Clarke for fear of". The Independent. 2012-07-06 . Retrieved 2023-01-21. Mr Smith, 55, started a new life in Warrington after he was released from the prison system on licence several years ago. The Fitzgibbon clan dealt in violence, money and drugs for more than a decade, amassed a fortune, yet claimed thousands of pounds in benefits, writes Channel 4 News Home Affairs Correspondent Simon Israel.

The Fitzgibbons stayed at the top of their game because they use extreme violence to protect their interests. Graham Johnson, crime writer

Graham Johnson (born 4 May 1968) is an author and investigative journalist from Liverpool in the United Kingdom. [1] He has written for several news organisation and the since the 2000s has written both non-fiction and fiction books. His works focuses largely crime, especially organised crime. Johnson has made documentary films and appeared on television as a crime pundit.

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But a listening device was planted inside, and for three years Soca investigators eavesdropped and recorded hundreds of hours of conversations. Johnson has written for publications including the News of the World, the Sunday Mirror, The Observer, Vice, The Guardian and the Liverpool Echo, and often publishes crime stories under different bylines.

Johnson has covered stories including drug dealing in Britain, [5] people smuggling in Europe, child slavery in India and Pakistan, and war in the Balkans. Johnson's novels have been published by Mainstream Publishing and Simon & Schuster. [ citation needed] Johnson Described in parliament as an "investigative reporter supreme". [9] [ clarification needed] He said: "Shaun has a great personal story, although unlike many of the people I wrote about he never sold drugs. My understanding is that Shaun needed a gun for his own protection because he was being threatened by dangerous people. "

A lot of this is the social history of the city, with drug gangs becoming more and more powerful over recent decades. They used false passports to travel, booked flights they never caught, and paid for with cloned cards. Trips to Turkey were via circuitous routes. Liverpool's courts are some of the busiest in the UK, with a huge variety of cases being heard each week. Between 1995 and 1997, Johnson worked at the News of the World. [2] He had a notorious scoop about the Beast of Bodmin Moor at the paper. [3] Johnson later explained that there was of culture of fear at the paper and he fabricated stories under pressure from his bosses. [4] To research his debut novel, Powder Wars (2004), Johnson spent several years on and off embedded with some of Britain's most notorious gangs. [ citation needed]

Crime writer Graham Johnson, who studied the family, told Channel 4 News: “The Fitzgibbon crime family have been major players in organised crime for 30 or 40 years, and one of the reasons they’ve stayed at the top of their game is because they use extreme violence when necessary to protect their interests. They can be very intimidating and are very good at getting at witnesses, which is why the police find it very difficult to build cases, and they’re extremely good drug dealers, so it’s a recipe for success as an underworld crime family”. Ripping off the state When I started writing books about organised crime in Liverpool in 2003 it was very much a cult audience – now it’s mainstream." For three years they were a top Soca target. They used false passports to travel, booked flights they never caught, and paid for with cloned cards. Trips to Turkey were via circuitous routes. Receive newsletters with the latest news, sport and what's on updates from the Liverpool ECHO by signing up here Read More Related Articles

Mr Johnson was behind two investigative books on how Liverpool criminal John Haase managed to dupe the authorities into releasing him from prison several months into a 20-year-prison sentence for drug offences. It started in Liverpool, and it’s still mainly controlled in Liverpool—but it has hooks in Amsterdam, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, South America… all the usual suspect countries. I interviewed the Amsterdam police, and the first thing they told me is that they investigate everyone—Triads, Eastern European gangs, and the Italian and Russian Mafias—but they roll their eyes when you mention the "scousers" because they're the ones they have to deal with constantly. Shaun Smith, who grew up in Kirkdale, served out a prison sentence after he was linked by police to a handgun. year-old Christine Fitzgibbon (above, centre) is the matriarchal head of a Merseyside family whose drug connections extended round the globe.