Brink's-Mat robbery links to Pablo Escobar and Muriel McKay murder revealed
Brink's-Mat robbery cash was hidden offshore with the help of a criminal quizzed over the kidnapping and murder Muriel McKay, a Daily Mirror investigation can reveal.
Adam Hosein was working for drug lord Pablo Escobar when he provided "legal and business" introductions for a British man suspected of laundering the proceeds of the 1983 gold heist. Hosein had previously been questioned about Mrs McKay's 1969 murder after she was abducted having been mistaken for the then-wife of media mogul Rupert Murdoch.
Adam's younger brothers, Arthur and Nizamodeen Hosein, were convicted of the murder at the Old Bailey in 1970 and jailed despite her body having never been found. Adam, now dead, fled the UK for his native Trinidad and later settled in Florida where he ran front companies for Escobar - portrayed in Netflix hit Narcos - in the 1980s.
The Daily Mirror can now reveal that in January 1987 a man then suspected of laundering proceeds of Britain's biggest ever robbery, flew from London to Trinidad to meet Hosein. Police records show the pair then travelled on to Panama and Miami in Florida.
Asked earlier this month about his dealings with Hosein, the man, now in his 70s, who we are not naming for legal reasons, told the Mirror: "While Adam Hosein may have been busy in other 'arenas', he had no direct involvement in BM [Brink's-Mat] other than facilitating legal and business intros. Networking etc.."
Our revelations come as the latest series of BBC drama The Gold focuses on Scotland Yard's attempts to trace the proceeds of the Brink's-Mat robbery. It opens with the stolen bullion having been split into two, with one half hidden in a disused Cornish tin mine for years before being moved around the world.
The gold was indeed split between the six robbers, with South London armed blaggers "Mad" Micky McAvoy and Brian "The Colonel" Robinson controlling one half, along with Brian Perry. The three other raiders, John "Little Legs" Lloyd, Tony White and John Fleming had the rest.
After Robinson and McAvoy were jailed for the robbery the pair were cheated out of their share when Perry brought in fraudster Gordon Parry to help him hide the cash. The money allegedly hidden offshore with the help of Hosein, came from this half.
A huge leak of confidential documents known as the "Panama Papers" revealed in 2016 that Parry laundered some of the cash using a company set up in the central American country. Ex-Brink's-Mat detective Ian Brown told the Mirror: "When this crime happened the most scared people of anybody were the villains because they were stuck with gold, what are they going to do with it? They are going to get money, what are they going to do with it?
"They were used to ten grand, twenty grand for a robbery and they can hide that and spend it and go off on holiday and do other things but you can't with 26 million. Suddenly they were in the position of having to rely on other people to do things they were not capable of doing and that's hide money.
"They have managed to find people who were capable of doing it." The other half of the gold was moved by M25 killer Kenneth Noye and Hatton Garden heist mastermind Brian Reader. They gave it to John "Goldfinger" Palmer in Bristol who smelted it in his back garden.
We can now reveal that a British former solicitor's clerk suspected of hiding some of this half of the proceeds offshore has taken the secrets of the missing gold to his grave.
Geoffrey Greenlees was accused of banking £4.1 raised from the stolen bullion in Dubai and was wanted by police. Greenlees was later named as a shareholder and director of a string of shell companies in the leaked Panama Papers. But he passed away in the Philippines four years ago aged 84 having never been arrested.
He was named in court as being linked to this group through Jean Savage, robber Lloyd's common law wife. The former tobacconist from West Kingsdown in Kent, played by Dorothy Atkinson in the drama, is understood to still live with Lloyd in the same area.
Savage's 1990 trial heard how she deposited plastic bags full of £50 notes at the Bank of Ireland in Croydon, South London, which totalled £2.5 million.
It grew with interest to £4.1 million before Savage then allegedly transferred it into an account held by Greenlees in Dubai, Michael Austin-Smith, prosecuting, told the Old Bailey. Detectives said they wanted to question Greenlees and Lloyd, who had gone on the run.
Lloyd, a close friend of Noye, played by Jack Lowden in the drama, fled to the United States while officers said at the time that Greenlees was last heard of in Jakarta.
Ex-Brink's detective Tony Curtis, who spent 13 years on the investigation, told the Mirror he flew to the Indonesian capital in a vain attempt to track Greenlees down. Mr Curtis said: "There was no sign of him."
Greenlees ended up living in Manila where he was patron and "Godfather" of the Philippine Lawn Bowls Association. A Facebook tribute to him on the Association's website said: "He died peacefully beside his family members."
Only two of the robbers were convicted but they were all forced to pay out compensation to the insurers following a civil claim. Fleming, from south London, was charged with handling the gold but a London magistrate threw out the case in 1987. He is understood to have died while living on a barge in London.
When Mr Brown caught up with Noye and his fellow launderers most of the gold had been sold, the cash offshore. The investigation, headed by controversial detective Tony Lundy, moved unofficially to Alicante, Spain.
Bugs at Fleming's villa revealed he was moving money through an Isle of Man firm with the help of bent lawyer Patrick Diamond. Brown and Lundy flew to the British Virgin Islands, where they found links to a mafia hitman and US and Colombian drug cartels.
Fleming, Diamond and Lloyd were ordered to repay huge sums after being sued by the insurers. Noye was jailed for 14 years for handling the gold with Brian Reader, who got eight.
Also jailed for their part in the later operation alongside Savage were Perry, financier Parry and solicitor Michael Relton. John "Goldfinger"Palmer was acquitted of handling the gold. He and Perry were later shot dead. Of the suspected robbers just Lloyd, in Kent, and White, in South London, are believed to still be alive.
Noye, now 78, served 19 years for murdering Stephen Cameron on an M25 slip road. The Mirror revealed in 2023 his links to a £40m carbon credit scheme.
Mr Brown said of the Brink's-Mat proceeds: "I think it's out there but multiplied perhaps ten, twenty, thirty, forty times. It has earned hundreds of millions of pounds from the 26 million that went from Heathrow."
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