Subj:  UK: 'Serpico' claims Scotland  Yard elite ran drug cartel



Date: September 20 1998



Source: Sunday Times (UK)







'Serpico' claims Scotland Yard elite ran drug cartel 

by Nicholas Rufford, Home Affairs Editor 



 DRUG rackets worth millions of pounds were run from

 inside Britain's biggest police force, according to a former

 Scotland Yard detective who is to publish his allegations. 



 The officer, dubbed "Serpico" by friends after the New

 York police officer who was pilloried for exposing

 corruption, described sections of the drug squad and the

 regional crime squad at Scotland Yard as the "most

 professional criminal cartels in Britain". He is writing a

 book in which he alleges that officers stole drugs, paid

 phantom informants and fabricated evidence. 



 Duncan MacLaughlin, a detective for 18 years, is believed

 to be the first officer to talk openly about alleged

 corruption within the elite squads in which he worked. 



 His claims are likely to give renewed urgency to the efforts

 by Sir Paul Condon, the Metropolitan police

 commissioner, to stamp out criminal activity within the

 force. Condon has already launched a wide-ranging inquiry

 into police corruption, and has set up CIB3, a special unit

 of the Complaints Investigation Bureau, to investigate. 



 MacLaughlin, 38, who admits he was not "straighter than

 straight", spent five years in the drug squad and five years

 in the London-based regional crime squad, which drew the

 best detectives from forces across southern England to

 investigate serious crime. 



 He described the regional squad, which he left in 1994, as

 like Colditz, the second world war prison. "You put all the

 clever ones, all the brains, in one office, and you got the

 cleverest scams. There were no better criminals in the

 country . . . I was a member of the most professional

 criminal cartel that Britain has ever produced." 



 MacLaughlin said hundreds of thousands of pounds were

 siphoned from police funds through the creation of

 phantom informants. "If we got anonymous information that

 there was going to be a deal involving, say, 25 kilos of

 coke [cocaine], straightaway you would create an

 imaginary informant. Then a friend would come in and sign

 a bit of paper and maybe receive up to UKP40,000 reward

 money." 



 Another practice was to sell drugs which were seized on

 raids. "Drugs were recycled all the time. If you found 15

 kilos of coke, you produce 12 kilos and 3 would be sold.

 A kilo of coke you get UKP30,000 for, so you have made

 UKP90,000." 



 The claims are some of the most detailed made against

 Scotland Yard. MacLaughlin resigned in July. He was

 facing a discipline charge - which he denies - for allegedly

 removing paperwork relating to a murder investigation. 



 MacLaughlin does not admit to being involved in any of the

 crimes he alleges, though he does admit to holidaying in the

 Caribbean while on police assignment to trace a drug

 baron's assets. He said he did not feel guilty because he

 was not spending taxpayers' money, but cash from a Home

 Office reward fund. "I was no angel, I would go back to

 the Caribbean just when it suited me. The Met police had

 no idea. It just showed how incompetent they were," he

 said. 



 Roy Clark, deputy assistant commissioner of Scotland

 Yard, said that some of MacLaughlin's claims were false

 and others "wildly exaggerated". He said it was a pity that

 MacLaughlin was "not prepared to come forward and, if

 there was any truth in his suggestions, share his information

 with the anti-corruption squad". 



 Another former senior officer in the complaints bureau

 described MacLaughlin as an oddball who would have

 been sacked had he not resigned. 



 MacLaughlin claims that he was rebuffed when he tried to

 give information to Ian Quinn, the bureau's director. A

 Scotland Yard source dismissed the claim and said

 MacLaughlin had made an allegation to the bureau about

 the private life of a senior officer for which there was "not

 an iota of evidence".