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An insight into the character, personality and passion of the leading figures in the Investigation and Intelligence industry who have shaped the way we gather, analyse and utilise information and intelligence.
Really, it's now intelligence-led, but technology-enabled is the key in my view.
Yeah, yeah. But the intelligence-led piece is not just the
analytics. It's not just forensic accountants looking at the numbers. They
can give you the quantum, they could do this, they could do that, which is
great, but they don't really tell you what's happened. So
you need somebody human to say that. And it turns out that one of
the guys that we'd actually charged for the offence
was going to give evidence against a corrupt police officer
on a team next to me in the same office,
but just the other side of the door, who actually was his
corrupt relationship. So we lost a massive
case due to that. What's the
weirdest motivation you came across over the years
that you said to yourself, I can't believe it? Well, there's one very simple one.
Hello and welcome Welcome to the Intelligence Advantage Podcast, where we talk
to the movers and shapers in the investigation and intelligence
space. My name is Gary Miller. I've been an investigative
lawyer for nearly half a century, and I'm also the chairman of the
IFG, a network of international investigative and
asset recovery lawyers. Today, I'm delighted
to be joined by a really good buddy who I haven't seen for a long
time, but we're going to correct that this week. John Brennan, who is the
CEO and founder of his own investigative group called the
Brennan Group, based in New York, Washington, and in the UK,
and has been a public servant for nearly 20 years
and the rest of his time in the private sector, which we will get
into in much more detail over the next 60 minutes. John,
welcome. It's absolutely wonderful to have you with us.
Gary, thank you. I don't know who you're talking about there. That was far
too good. Well, don't worry. The money in the Swiss bank account
has been well paid for. Don't worry. Yeah, nothing changes. Nothing changes.
So I've got to ask you, first of all, tell me about the
Brennan family. I mean, did— was— were either mum
or dad or anyone in the family in the investigation trade
or in the police or anything? How did you come to get into this business?
Very, very interesting. Basically, the answer is yes. I've got my great-grandfather
was a detective sergeant at the docks in
London at the turn of the century. My father was a
chief superintendent and was in the era of the
Craigs and the Richardsons. And of course, I turn up a little bit later,
having said I'd never be a police officer as long as I live because I've
seen some of the bad side of what it did in terms of my mum
and dad got divorced and so forth. But the next thing is they're back
together, which unfortunately they just passed, but they ended up remarrying each
other. So there's something there. That was interesting, to say
the least. And then, as I say, I actually started
off a career as a teacher. I actually was fairly good at
football and cricket, believe it or not, and thought that was going to be my
career. Failed at both and got the sack from both. So therefore, I had to
find something else to do. And I ended up becoming a PE teacher. So I
ended up going to Exeter University, to St Luke's College,
right, where I had 3 fantastic years. So really, I came to the police
much later than most. I was 25 plus. Which
in a way was quite an advantage because, you know, you've had a
bit of life experience that most of the guys that join the police are not,
you know. And how do you start off? Do you start off at training college?
What was the beginning of your career? Absolutely. I went around,
I'm 6 foot 3, so with a big helmet on and the silly hat,
I was more like 6 foot 8. And yes, I had to do the
normal beat patrols. I started off at Romford. My first
arrest was for cattle rustling. Which I thought was quite
bizarre. But then I very quickly
had a bit of a prowess for the detective work. And I ended up going
on an attachment to the CID. And I
helped solve a quite nasty crime out in Upminster in
Essex. And I never went back. I was supposed to go back to uniform, but
they said no, I was a little bit older. So I ended up
basically, you know, following a sort of detective's
career path. The police kept wanting to send me on extended
interviews for rapid promotion. I kept saying no, I want to
do it the normal way, right, which is quite interesting.
And yeah, so that's, that's how it came about. And then, then
really, I sort of morphed into just pure detective work. Now tell me, first
of all, I want to go back because I've never heard the— although that's not
true, I do somehow remember you telling me about the family background, but
The very first policeman in the family was your grandfather or great-grandfather?
My grandfather. Yeah, Ginger Brennan.
It was a great big tall Irish DS. Ginger Brennan, I love it. Where
was he? Where was he? Um, Limehouse.
Limehouse police station. So he was, he was going after the Chinese
opium dens in the day at the turn of the century, right? Uh, and
I only know this because my father and my uncle did a bit of a
digging into this. And, uh, basically what they found is
that he was there. My father was actually at Limehouse as a uniform
inspector. But hold on, what about the gap in between? The grandfather?
Ah, my granddad, my father's father, he actually was on, uh,
the Royal Yacht. He was a purser on the Royal Yacht. Oh, so half of
my— yeah, it's a strange story. So half of my
uncles and aunts on, on that side, and there's lots of them, very Irish, I'm
afraid. I think it's 13. Half of them were born in the
Bahamas into absolute luxury, and half of them were
born in the East End of London after the crash. So you can imagine
it was quite an interesting mix of uncles and aunts.
Okay. But that's, you know, great-grandfathers, etc., etc. So
the bottom line is he's the missing link, as it were.
Yeah. But he certainly saw— What was his name, John? What was
your grandfather's name? Joseph. Uncle Joseph. Joseph.
Joseph Brennan. Yeah, it's a lovely biblical name. You could be
Jewish as well as Irish. Well, there you go. You never
know. You never know. Yeah. And so I'm a— sorry, go ahead. Yeah,
how is it that the policing jumps a generation and
then your father decided that this was, uh,
the tradition he wanted to continue? What was behind that, do you think?
Well, I think basically it was post-Second World War. So my father lied about
his age and ended up on D-Day for his sins. He was a Royal
Marine, then ended up out in Burma,
which, you know, was obviously quite traumatic at the time.
He was releasing all the prisoners of war on those terrible railways and things.
Never talked about it too much, but when he came back, he obviously
demobbed, started off as a milkman. He always says,
he always says he was a milkman. But then decided, well,
hang on a minute, there's something else here, and joined the police.
So he liked the, the military side of the world. And I
thought, you know, in those days, quite a lot of people that came out, as
I'm sure you're aware, went into the police service. And so that's how it happened.
So he, he joined in London, obviously, in the
East End. And eventually he ended up, as I say, Chief Superintendent
up in the West Midlands Police. Wow. And what was the most famous case that
you recall that your dad Hanboldt.
I don't know if you recall the Cannock Chase murders many, many moons ago. He
was one of the local detectives in Cannock Chase, north of Birmingham, north
of Warsaw. And there was a guy that was obviously kidnapping the little
kiddies and doing terrible things to them, burying them, burying the body up
in Cannock Chase. But anyway, so that was the one thing I always
remember that took a heavy toll on him, actually. It was a very,
you know, they knew a lot about the suspect they were trying to get,
and they didn't quite get it., and, and other people
were killed. So it was a big, big, you know, I always remember I was
only a tiny, you know, but I was probably, what, 10, I suppose, in those
days. And I was going to ask you that question. You, you will come on
to the sort of chronology in a minute, but the
impact psychologically, um, which is not often— you
don't often see it, um, when you are
looking at movies and stuff, but the psychological impact
of for example, particularly with your dad, who is— who
was investigating some really nasty pedophilia
or something. It must be huge. How do you separate, John? How do
you separate that stuff that you see every day? I think—
I think it— first of all, nowadays people recognize it a lot more. In those
days, my dad's days, it was not spoken of. But you see it. You
saw it when he got home. You know, there was clearly something. Well, I always
remember it was very, very clear. You never saw him, he's always up early in
the morning. Don't forget, there was no mobile phones in those days, there was no
computers, it was all legwork, you know. But when jumping forward
a generation, to me, I always found
that you still now to this day, some of the terrible things you've had
to see, they do affect you still. That you cannot help but have a flashback
every now and then of that. And I think you deal with it by trying
to put it into boxes to say that, you know, you had to maintain
your cool, you had to maintain what you're trying to do. You had to be
professional in how you dealt with both the victims and the victim's family as well
as the suspect. Even though, you know, some of the things you
had to deal with, it was terrible to have to
even think of, let alone deal with the guy who did it. So I think
you had to put them in, you had to compartmentalize a little bit, right? And
that's how I dealt, that's how I dealt with it anyway. But even to this
day, one of the first murders I had to deal
with still comes back to me as a little tiny baby, 4-month-old baby.
Very, very difficult to deal with. Wow. You know, so, you know, did you get
the culprit? Both his mum and dad, the baby
wouldn't stop crying. So they decided to— I mean, you don't really need this. It
was too much to discuss. But yeah, and it was
a terrible way for the little one to die. So, and I always remember I
was a junior DC at Stoke Newington Police Station at that time. I got
a phone call from Hackney Children's Hospital. Because
the two parents who took the baby into hospital
said something's wrong with the baby, but then obviously they saw what they'd actually done.
So, so that's always, that's always there. Other things
that you do recall, but you have to put them away for when
you get home. Because, you know, if you live at home, you know, I saw
the bad side of that from my dad. So I didn't want that to happen
to, you know, Pam and my daughters. So, you know, you know,
it's, you tend to try and keep that away, really. And Mum, did
she— how did she cope with your
dad, who was obviously affected by this? Just the best she could, I guess.
How did— what, did she have a mechanism or not? I'm not sure, to be
honest. She was always the sort of the real matriarch of the family. She was
the one at the rock that everyone went to. I mean, my older sister was,
was, uh, very close to her as well, and, and it became, you
know, Mum was the constant. And that sort
of came in every now and then. The thing is how you looked at it.
But it does take its toll. It certainly took its toll on my dad. My
dad was, was, you know,
he took to alcohol a little bit. He was very much more stressed
than normal. And you see that a lot. You see that a hell of a
lot in the police service, as you know, because it is difficult. It's
difficult to cope with, to be honest. Yeah, but you have to, you know, so
that's But your dad clearly was a committed public servant. He came out of
the army and he knew and felt that that's what his vocation was
in life, I guess. Exactly. Absolutely. 100%. I
mean, it's— unfortunately, he died a couple of years ago, but clearing out the
place, you find his medals and his war record and things all hanging
beautifully. And I didn't even know he had them still, you know. So it
was quite eye-opening for my sister and I to go through and find all
these things, you know. Any brothers, John, or not? Just a
sister. No, no brothers. Just a big sister who's a geologist and
archaeologist, believe it or not, and she was a headmistress of a big public
school. So, uh, she's, she's the educated one, you know. And
did, did Mum either, either directly
or indirectly kind of try and push you away from joining the
police? Was it something that you— she felt you were going to be drifting towards,
or not? I think so. I mean, she supported me a lot in
the sport that I was doing. She'd take me to games here, there, and everywhere
because that was going to be my, my thing, you know. Um, and
I unfortunately I didn't quite make it on both, so it was then a
decision as to what to do. So I still like playing football and cricket, so
I thought, well, a PE teacher is not bad. Uh, and I had a PE
member of staff at my school. I went to an all-boys Catholic grammar
school, um, very sport orientated. I got on really well with the
PE guys, obviously. And the next thing you know is, you know, that way you've
got to go here, you've I'll do this. And that's how I drifted into teaching,
to be honest. But I was getting more money playing semi-professional football
than I was teaching, you know, so it was crazy in those
days. But then when I joined the police, I ended up playing for Met Police
anyway. So because Metropolitan Police had a semi-professional team
anyway, still do. So it
became a lot of sport as well in the early days. But then as I
became a detective, so that something had to give and it had to be had
to be the sport, to be honest. I can see you more as a rugby
player than a— yeah, well, now, now you're going—
yeah, not in those days. Were you, were you a skinny, uh,
a skinny dude in the old days? Yeah, yeah, probably. Yeah, I was about— I
was, yeah, probably 14, 14 stone is the heaviest, a
center-back. And anything that moved, I kicked it, uh, and that was
it really. Um, that was your job? That was it, yeah, just
center-half. Yeah, so, but so, no, I actually Did you get to the
stage of any of the academies, or they didn't exist in those
days? Well, the academies didn't exist, but I was, um, I was part of
the Ashton School set up for Aston Villa. Okay. So I got selected
for the, uh, what's known as— in those days it was a youth squad.
So I got into the England youth squad, didn't play, just didn't quite make it,
but that was the— at that level. And then back into semi-pro,
which was, which was quite good. I was in the Western League and played for
league sides and all things like that. Right, back up into London. And, and
that's how I ended up, uh, teaching in Essex, out
in Upminster. And then, um, hence,
you know, the, the Met was the place to go once I decided
that, you know, to move on. It probably coincided with Victoria, who you know, my
oldest daughter, who's now a vet. Uh, when, when we had a great
10-year plan, Pam and I, right, it lasted through— it lasted 3 years,
and there's Victoria. So, uh, that's that may have
been a coincidence or not, but I don't know. But, uh, yeah, that's so, that's
where, that's when it all happened. So we changed and I became a policeman.
And tell me, one of the things that I remember
vividly from the, the, um, years we
spent, um, investigating and, and, uh, having some fun
at the same time was your experience with the Yardies. Tell
me a bit about Yardies and and that time of
life in London and the UK and how
different it was for you or what the impact was on you
and your career. In fact, it's quite—
it's interesting, really. I was talking about this the other day in the sense that
it was a pure fluke that I actually became quite well known
in that area of crime. I had a very good
mentor in the police, as I did in the private sector, and I'm sure we'll
come on to that a little bit later.. But Roy Graham
in particular, Malcolm Hebron, who you know, yeah, they
were very much early days, my mentors in the police, which
was great. And I became a detective constable, I went to Stoke Newington Police
Station in northeast London, which was
a predominantly Jamaican
area. And, you know, it's changed quite considerably now. But in those days, it
was quite a difficult area to
police.. And what happened, I just happened to be the last guy standing, as
it were, one night in the CID office. The
phone call goes, and it was from City Road, which is the adjoining
police station, the adjoining area. And they said, we've had a murder, we
need someone who knows everything about Jamaican organised crime. It could
be a police driver, can do this, can do that. I didn't tick the box
for anything. I'd just come from Romford where I was doing rustling, and goodness knows
what else, you know, and a few armed robberies and things like that.
So next thing you know is I get sent down there. And sure enough,
there is a murder and it's a guy by the name of Innocent
Ekbalufu. I'll never forget it. Innocent Ekbalufu was a
Nigerian drug dealer who sold some bad sensimilia,
which is a highly powerful
cannabis basically. And they, 5 guys turn up and just throw him out the
10th floor window. And it caught, they said it was defenestrated, which I thought
was quite good. So he got chucked out the
window, basically. And suddenly there's 5 street names that we
were looking for that, of course, I'd never come across this before.
But I had, in the couple of weeks I'd been at Stoke
Lewington, managed to— I arrested a heroin addict, I flipped him as an informant, he
gave me a name, it turned out to be one of the names of
the 5 people that we had early doors. And
over a 4-year period, I eventually arrested every one of them.
So I got, uh, one on the night was a guy called Beaver, one
in Bristol called, uh, Largie, Clement Atlee Largie, which are again, these
names are fantastic names. And then Big Juby, Little Juby, I
got Little Juby in London, North London. And finally the one was called
the Jackal, Byron Lamarr. And I eventually got him in Queens in New York about
4 years later. Little Juby I got in Kingston, Jamaica. And it was
through that murder inquiry that I suddenly realized that, hang on, there's a
different thing here. It's not organized crime. It's
basically disorganized or disorganized organized crime. Whoever's got
accessibility to either drugs, guns, money, transport, a big guy
for that second. And we as a police service, I think at those days, we
didn't recognize that. You know, we did not give credit
to why these people one minute were selling cannabis on the street corner in New
York. Yeah. And the next week they're in Brixton, driving a Mercedes
with gold chains around their neck and, and having a firearm
and using cocaine. So we couldn't quite picture that. And it was because
of that, again, one of my mentors, Roy Rayne, was tasked as senior officer to
set up the Yardie Squad, as it became known. It was
actually called Operation Lucy after the girl in the office.
But the press got hold of the fact that we were looking at Yardies, which
is the term that the Jamaican folks back in Jamaica used
to call them, come from their backyard. And that's what Yardies is.
It's also in the backyard, because don't forget, some of my best friends in the
world are Jamaicans. They're most brilliant people, but the bad guys
are really bad. Um, so, and they know that. So over a
period of time, um, several years, I ended up being on the— what became
known in the press as the Yardie Squad. Uh,
became very much, uh, transatlantic all the time because these
guys traveled on false British passports. So we were able to
actually piece together really quite a good intelligence background to it, even though
at the time, that intelligence, you know,
was— everyone was concerned for the political input. You know, is it just black on
black? Are we being biased towards it, racist towards it, which we weren't at
all. It was— it could have been blue, orange, green, it doesn't matter. But at
the time, of course, it was quite sensitive. So
That's how I became really interested in how I managed
to work out and became quite adept at getting people
to talk to me. That was
natural. I listen. It's not what I say, it's what other people say. Yeah. And
I spent weeks and months sitting in shebeens, which are illegal drinking
clubs in the north of London, getting known by the ladies who cooked all
the dinner for everybody, chatting away. They all thought I was crazy because I
was obviously a policeman. I was 6'3", I was blonde. And
yeah, and they said, what the hell 'Cause I stopped their drug trade while I
was in there. So it was quite an interesting— I wouldn't have thought it was
too easy for you if you ever considered it, going undercover, John. I
mean, it's not easy. Never done it
in my life, thank goodness. I've managed several major undercover
operations, but never, ever done it myself. I look too much like
a policeman. Was it something that you would have liked to have done, or was
it just a different kind of policing? No, it's
a totally different mindset, I think. I mean, you've met some
of my team, like Sylvia Misson,
brilliant undercover, fantastic. That was— that's the person that you need to play
herself or himself. The undercover must play himself, right? And when it—
when the evidence comes before them, I would be too tempted to just grab.
When I was, you know, as a police officer, you just grab. Well, these guys,
you don't. You have to let it run. You have to think of the bigger
picture, and you have to be managed accordingly. With
its, with its, with its own but very different psychological
impact. When you were handling people
that were undercover, you must
have seen the difficulties that they were going through
in trying to separate their undercover persona
from their real persona. Yeah, they did happen. I think the other thing
that was very, very important is to try and control the scenario that these guys
are going into. And that was the biggest sort of challenge for me, is
to make sure that I thought of everything in terms of like a risk assessment,
you'd call it nowadays. In those days, you just did it. You didn't, you didn't
have a term for it or whatever. So you had
to assess what, what you need, what you're trying to achieve, and how you can
control that environment, which is very, very difficult to do. So you
had to rely totally on the backup teams that support the
undercover as well. Obviously, you use surveillance teams that you had
to use.. And it was, the challenge was trying to
maintain where you want to get with the overall case, but also ensure the
safety of the undercover, which is number one priority. And the other thing, of course,
being Metropolitan Police, it was always if you had money, flash money, don't lose
the money, you know, because that would have been a bad thing. So I only
did that once. So that was, I lost the money once, but there you go.
But you know, that is the sort of thing that was, and
it's horses for courses, Gary. You know, there's other
people that couldn't manage anything, you know. And I think when we come to talk
about the corporate world, you'll see that there's very
few, in my experience, law enforcement guys that have found the transition over to
the private sector an easy thing. Because it's a slightly
different mentality in terms of, in the police, you know, you're looking for
conviction, looking for evidence to arrest and
prosecute and put people away. In the private
sector, the criteria is different, what you're trying to achieve. And, you know, in terms
of is it criminal, is it civil, you know, is it just you want recovery
of funds, you want what's the PR implications and that sort of stuff. Yeah.
Whereas of course, you don't get that as a police officer. And therefore
the transition is quite interesting. But again, I was lucky with— you
do get that political stuff, or at least that you've— when
you and I watch TV programs now, the whole thing, and
maybe it wasn't as Maybe it wasn't as prevalent, although I don't know
that, you know, the hierarchy, the way in
which politics operated and either helped or got in the way of investigating.
Did you come across that internal political thing when you were in
the police or not? I think there was— it was there, but
I think it's how you maneuvered your way around
it. Okay. I, again, I've got great mentors to teach me how
to write reports that get the result that you're trying to achieve and,
and try to answer any specific questions that, you know, were coming
within the report, right? So it gave the senior
officers, you know, almost a tick box. Yeah, we've got that, we've got that, we've
got that. And that was a— that was a skill. That wasn't— that wasn't just
made up. That you had to make sure that you knew what you're trying to
achieve. So who was your mentor? You mentioned— was it
Roy or Malcolm? Roy Graham at that stage. He was— yeah,
and of course he's, you know, he's still around and he's, uh— he was terrific.
I mean, he helped me a lot. There was him, there was, uh, John
Greave, who also is well known. And, uh, yes, is
John around, still around? John's still around, yeah. He's
an academic now. And, uh, yeah, he said— I can't— I'm not sure which university
is that, but there was somebody I met very recently who said he,
he was, he was still the— still John Greave, the same as old John Greave.
I always remember he had the Battle of Waterloo in his office in the, in
the yard, you know, so with all the soldiers on them, right? Great. He
was one of these strategic thinkers, was he? Yeah,
great character. Great, great character. He stood out
head and shoulders above Roy Ram. No, no,
Roy was definitely my number one. For me, he was
perfect for me because he listened, he understood what I
was trying to achieve, he let me have my head to do
it. Yeah. But they always had my back, and that's something unique.
So you can push the boundaries as far as you can go, but you can't
go over them.. And unfortunately, as you know, there's so many cases where people do
go over the boundaries. And I've lost major cases as a police officer
because of police corruption, you know, one that was a
4-year inquiry. But at the same time, you also pick up
great contacts throughout the period of time, which I still now use today,
such as two very young barristers,
which was Sally Bennett-Jenkins and Brendan Kelly, both of which
now are married, have 6 wonderful kids, and are both KCs
at the Bailey in Inner London, you know. So those are that because of
that, because of those relationships, they were first, they were
junior counsel on a couple of the cases I did. One was a major rape
case, one was another big drug case. And
because of the working relationship there, that's gone on for
25, 26, 28 years, you know, and now they're very, you know, at the top
of their profession. It's always nice to be able to pick the phone up and
say, you know, can you give me some advice on this or the other? Because
we are not only colleagues, working colleagues, but we're friends because of it. Like yourself,
you know, I mean, as I say, you and I have gone back— we go
back a very long way. Go back a long way. So you mentioned, you
mentioned the C word, the corruption word,
which, you know, is— it's just like any— it's
just another form of criminality because it's
criminality, but it's more impactful for you and I because it comes from within
the group that you would otherwise trust. So how—
give us a— if you can give us a flavor of either that
corruption case that you were alluding to, or something that really
ripped the guts out of a case you were investigating. Well, it's probably
a good example of it anyway. And I won't go
into the details of the names of the actual guys, you know,
but it was basically a 3 or 4-year inquiry, as I would
call it. It was a linked
inquiry with the Met Police RCS, as it was, Regional Crime Squad, as it was
then, the old 9 Region. It all changed and became Southeast Regional Crime
Squad, then eventually the National NCA. Yeah, so that's the forerunner of that. Yeah. And
we were working a lot with the guys up from Newcastle, which I think was
11 RCS in those days, and many others. And we ended up with 6
people in the dock in a London Crown Court. And in those days, I'm sure
you remember, we had the PII hearings, which we still
do now, public interest immunity. We had several, we had
several wiretaps on, we had all sorts of techniques that we were using
that we had to obviously go and apply to talk to the judge and
say, we need your support in this PII application. Yeah, I did 2 weeks,
2 weeks of that. We won on everything. And the one name
I will name is John Kelsey Fry, who was then Senior Treasury
Counsel, came into us and said, I'm sorry, gentlemen, your case
stops now.. And we've done everything. We were apt, we had lots of, lots
of drugs, we had lots of evidence, we had everything. And it
turns out that one of the, the guys that we'd
actually charged for the offence was going to give evidence against a
corrupt police officer on a team next to me in the same
office, but just the other side of the
door, who actually was his corrupt relationship. So we
lost, we lost a massive case., due to that,
even though we were desperately unhappy because obviously we got through the difficult part of
the PII hearing and we're all ready to go. And it was literally, gentlemen,
it won't go any further. So that's where it really hit home to me because
I spent a hell of a lot of time doing that. So it
was— that was, that was really politics in a way, with—
or, I don't know, public interest, weighing up the value
of putting away the guys that you were investigating as
opposed to getting rid of a corrupt policeman? That's correct.
There were 6, 6 people in
the dock first, and one was, was the contact guy with the
corrupt officer. As a matter of interest, did that corrupt officer get done?
Did he go down? Yes, he did. Yeah, he
did. Yeah. Yeah. Did you come across this
a lot or much in your time in the
police or not? Actually, no. I
mean, obviously it
was there. Yeah. And you tended to, um, if you identified it, you had to
do something about it, clearly, you know. I mean, but, but
you can, you could maneuver that. You knew that if something wasn't quite right,
you know, and it's going to impact your case, carry on doing it
without getting anywhere near it. I see. Uh, there was a couple of things that
were very interesting in that score, but again, you know, It's in
an organization as big as what the police in London was in that 33,000, whatever
it was, there was only 3,000, I think it
was detectives. There was this nonsense about putting people back on interchange because
I thought it was only detectives that were corrupt. That was total
nonsense. But that caused a lot of detectives, the skill set that they've got, to
lose it and go back to uniform for years, 2 years,
3 years, whatever. That was a policy decision at the top, which I could
never understand. Because you put all this training and effort in to make a detective,
and then you take it all away again, and he's on the street
corner doing a traffic stop or whatever. So that, that I found interesting. When you
got promoted, you had to go back to uniform. So I
was lucky, I went to West Ham. I went to West Ham as custody sergeant,
sitting there taking notes of the guy coming
in. And a very good former colleague of mine who was just been
promoted from a Inspector to a Chief Inspector, was
a uniform Chief Inspector at the same police station. So within 2 weeks, I had
a drug squad that I was running. So it was fine, you know, so it
helped me not have to do too much in uniform as a sergeant. But so
what was, what was the— before we move into the
corporate sector, tell me what the most challenging— was it the
Yardie set time? What was the most challenging period for
you while you were in the police?
Challenging-wise, I think was— there's
two things. I think that the Yardies, the
work with the Yardies was absolutely fantastic. We were cutting edge. We
were doing transatlantic stuff. We had all sorts of great
informants. We were informant handling in a different way.
Again, all led by Mr. Ram and showing a
new way of doing
things. There were, we were able
to get some extremely dangerous people off the street. That's both in
the States, in the Caribbean, in Canada, and here. Because half
the time you only had the street name which went with them, and the only
way you could prove anything was with the fingerprints. Right.
So that was satisfying. That
was really satisfying. Let's move into the transition.
You're getting towards the end of your police career. What
was it that made you think now is the time to jump
into the private sector? Was there one thing that made you do it, or
was it a combination of, of things? There was a
combination. It was timing in terms of meeting Mike
Comer. Okay. Which was very,
very, very
instrumental. And also having some issues with— there were some threats to me
and the family and stuff like that. And I was relating to the
drugs work that you were doing. Yeah, yeah, it was. Yeah,
yeah. And Jamaican and the other stuff. So, but
that being said, you know, there was— it was time. It was the right time.
And I sat and talked about it for
a long time. But anyways, having done that, again, mentors,
it's all about mentors. And you, what I do, I like to take all the
good parts from all the people I know. Yeah. And other things I
think, okay. But then of course, I met Mike Comer, who you know. How did
you meet Mike? What was the first
instance? So do you remember Mike Stannard? Yeah, I do. Yeah.
Well, Mike, Mike Stannard was a customs officer. Yeah. And he and
I came across each other. And then he was then working, he'd left
the customs. Yeah, same age as me.. And he was
with Mike. Yeah. And, and I got an introduction through him
and also through Sylvia, who you know, is one of my team.
Her husband's partner in the police, because he was a police officer as well, worked
with Mike as well. So it was a small world. It was a very
small world. Was that Maxima or was that still Network in
those days? Now, that was Network. That because, yeah, I went
to Network with him. I was Basically, he and
I went— he was, he was going through extricating himself
from Network. Yeah, when I got there, and he asked me to go with
him, obviously, to create Maxima. We did a case in Dubai
with the World Gold Council,
which was Russian organized crime, which
is quite interesting. This was while at Network? While at Network, yeah. And then
that was the last job Mike did at Network. And then we both created
Well, he created it, obviously CEO, as you know. Yeah.
And in fact, that's when we first met just after with
Maxima because the way we got that particular job we worked on, which was
obviously interesting, was where I sat on the plane coming back from
Miami and the ultimate client. Do you remember this? I remember you giving me a
call the next day and say, you're never going to guess who I met
on an airplane coming back. But it is. That's
what it's like when you're traveling. It is. And the blessing that the guy
dropped his red wine all over my chinos
and we started chatting and I just said, I'll stay in London until you
get a chance to speak to your CEO,
who turns out to be an extremely influential guy in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Next thing you know is there's a
knock on the door at Maximus office and it's Ben, as you recall. Yeah. And
next thing you know is we had
a great job and that's That always remains great fond memories
because everything we tried in that came off. Yeah, which, which
was, you know, brilliant. So that's how that started. That's, that's how we— that's
how we started, really. And so you, you,
you gelled with Mike, and that convinced you, or Mike convinced you? Did you
have any doubts that you'd be a great
investigator? Were you cautious about making a move? No, I think—
no, I, I was totally confident. I mean, it I said it sounds wrong, but
I don't have to try hard at it. Yeah. As you know me, that I
can take in a lot of information and then come out with very precise— well,
this is, I think, what we need to do. Making sure, you know, I
think what the most important thing I did
was realize that it is different, but the actual skill
set you've learned in the police is identical.
And in some cases, in advance of what the standard corporate
investigative firm was doing in those times. It was just, it was Kroll, George
Kroll and Mike were the two sort of gurus, one
each side of the Atlantic. Yeah. And there was
very much a paper chase type of attitude towards, you know, get a theory
of the crime, theory of the fraud, all this. Whereas from
the policing perspective, it's looking at the people. And it still is now. And, you
know, that's a big, big thing for me is looking at the psychology
of what makes them do what they do. Yeah. And for them to tell you.
I mean, the most important— I don't think I've
done any major crime investigation without someone telling me what they did and
how they did it, or someone becoming an informant as to who did it.
And then it's a case of corroborating the evidence,
getting evidence to corroborate what the individual says, and then use the technology.
Because I mean, now as it's gone on, and I'm sure we'll get
on to tech, but really it's now intelligence-led but technology-enabled is
the key in my view. Yeah. But the intelligence-led piece
is not just the analytics. It's not just forensic accountants looking at the
numbers. They can give you the quantum, they could do this, they could do that,
which is great, but they don't really tell
you what's happened. So you need somebody human to say that.
So I find that it's the combination
of the human element, the technology, the ability to make sure you know what you
don't know. So it's no use me trying to do a forensic accounting job. I've
got Luke Steadman, you know, to do that. He's the best I know,
you know. So bring people in. So you fit the square peg in the
square hole, round peg in a round hole, and not have any ego about
it. That's the biggest problem I think with a lot of issues is
ego. Yeah. Whereas if you set a team together,
which will include lawyers, which will include forensic accountants, with tech guys.
Now you've got a lot of social media monitoring and all
the AI stuff that's coming along. You still need the human
element.. And if you haven't got the human element, it's very,
very difficult to actually understand exactly what you got. So that's where I
think certainly for me, I differentiate a little bit because
I'm very much into the
very highly focused, highly directed human intelligence plus the others put together, no ego
to say, well, I can do it all. I
can't, far from it. Uh, and have the ability and the knowledge to now go
anywhere in the world and feel comfortable
to do it.
So do you still think that the, the human— the
focus on the human element is as good in the police?
In other words, that it still has something to offer
the private, the corporate investigator? Do you think they've— they have
caught on as to how important that is? This
is a view. Yeah, go for it.
There's been a— because of over time. When I first started, I was encouraged to
go and talk to people. Yeah, encouraged to go and talk to criminals. Because they're
the ones who are going to tell you, everyone will tell you something. Doesn't matter
who they are, they'll tell you something. Yeah. The Jamaicans are brilliant at that. The
guys that you caught would give up everything,
give up their mum, give up their granddad, everybody, if they thought they
were gonna get a benefit from it. But what
happens is, I think, because of circumstances, and whether
it's just inexperience, you've lost a lot of the experienced
detectives at a time when it was really crucial. And that was
political, you know, the top sort of started having
to answer questions that were really political questions, not getting the job done.
Yeah. And so therefore, I think what happened is the skill of being able
to get out there and listen has been deterred from officers who want to do
it. Well, if you go and speak to a criminal, you might
be said that you're, you know, you're colluding with a criminal. I see. Well,
no, you're, you're out there to try and find information, you know, and you're not
going to get information on a major crime if you go and
see the local priest, you know, or the rabbi. You know, I mean, you may
if it's interesting, but, but you have to go and speak to the people that
are like you, do it. And that was what we were encouraged
to do. And, and do it in a way
that was very structured, very
clear. Every, every meet was,
was, you know, contemporaneously recorded. Payments were made, but it's not just for money. These
people do things for all sorts of different motivations. What's
the weirdest motivation you came across over the, over the years that you said to
yourself, I can't believe it? Well, there's one very simple
one, and the informant there's a lady, she was
absolutely brilliant. And I used to every morning when I used to go in
as a, as a young DC at Stoke Newington at the time. And I used
to go in and look at who'd been
arrested overnight and see if there were any organised criminals from the Jamaican Yardies
that I was looking for. Any of them might have just been arrested for shoplifting
or something like that. Right. So I'd always go and have a look at who'd
been arrested overnight. And there was a young
lady who was in there for
shoplifting of babies' nappies. And I think she was Jamaican. She said she was Jamaican.
So I had a little chat with her. I said, what is it? And she
said, I've got a baby, my baby father's in prison. And she gave me
all the names of who she— so I said, okay, so I cautioned her for
the offense because it was literally just a bundle of nappies.
And I went and bought her about 20 bundles of nappies and took them
out to a place, said, look, Don't go stealing. There you go. Less than 2
days later, she gave me a biggest, one of the biggest
Kruger Rand robberies that there was in North London. And she showed me where
they were, who did it, and I got it. That's
from nappies. I love it. So that just shows you that's a
film, The Nappy Connection. Was she, was
she not nervous about her somehow being tracked down? No, she trusts me.
I mean, it was the year we used to meet in a
particular place and She was good.
Do you still have some, some sources and informants? I mean, is
it something that the corporate investigation world obviously
needs as well, or not as much? Numerous, numerous, numerous.
Most— a lot of the money laundering cases that I'm coming— tended towards
a few money laundering cases at the
moment. Yeah. Absolutely fantastic informants. And you use that information, which you
have to corroborate, obviously. Most people think of it as the uncorroborated
evidence of a co-defendant is not really worth too much, and it isn't. No, you
have to corroborate it. But if you've got the information, and you've got the direction,
and you go out to look at and gather evidence
that corroborates that to a tee, then that information, that direction is
absolutely vital. And it allows you to do
things much, much quicker than if you— the old-fashioned— I've heard so many
US lawyers say, God bless them, It's
all in the analytics. No, it's not. You know, it's— I
mean, that's just nonsense. But they believe that because that's, you know, they
know, you know. But that's
a really interesting point that I've asked Steve
Young, Ron Warmington. How did you perceive the
difference and still see? Because you, you're transatlantic, you've got
offices in different places.
What is the cultural difference between an investigator an investigator
in the UK? I think it's very interesting. So I'm lucky enough to have half
a dozen of, I think, the top detectives. They'd
be top detectives, whether they were British, American, wherever. But you want to remember the
system in America is geared totally different to ours. Yeah.
So if you recall, the rank I was
at in the old days, I would arrest, charge, even indict. We used to
do soup reports where you used to commit people after the event and all this
stuff. We did it. We did it. Yeah, the police did it. They are
used to gathering evidence, getting it to a grand jury, which obviously we don't have
the grand jury system, and then getting warrants to go and arrest everybody at
the end. Therefore, they are directed by lawyers. They're directed in a state system. Is
that better, do you think? Is it a better system, John,
or not? No, I think it's— I think the hybrid would be the best, where
you had— which is what we ended up tending to do here, right?
Where you have— where we have case conferences, like, you know,
with barristers all the time. That, that tended to work extremely
well in the early days before the CPS came
about, to be honest. Yeah. So I think a hybrid of the
two would be the best system. But what happens is because they're used to being
directed to go and see this and go see— it's a bit like intelligence services.
You go to the intelligence services, you say, go to the scene of that murder
and see what you got. You come back and say, no, it's a dead body.
You then can say, well, Where did he die? Oh, hang on.
And he goes back, you know, so
it's just a different way of looking at things. Did
you find the transition? Did you find the transition? Listen, I've got some great mates
who are in the intelligence services and I wouldn't have anything said against them. But,
you know, I'm trying as an illustration of what it's like. It's
a different concept. Did you find
the transition difficult, John? Did you
find the transition over to the States? Difficult? No, no, not at
all. And the reason behind that was I was working a lot from here but
ended up a lot of the time, as you know, in Washington, D.C. with
a law firm called Hunton
Williams. Yeah. Who were very much traditional Virginia-based. You know, they're the Philip Morris's
of this world. That's their big clients, etc. And Dave Jennison, who
I've introduced you to and you've met many times,
Dave was more like-minded of us, really. So he was, he
was in the district. He was a district attorney or
something, was he? He was a US attorney. US attorney? US attorney. Yeah.
He was the federal side. Yeah. Okay. So he started off doing drug cases
in Miami and ended up doing Pinochet and all the guys in, in
DC. And then he ended up in The Hague, you know, as the
US representative in The Hague. So very much international. Right? He gets it. He
got it that, hang on a minute, the relationship between the lawyer
and the investigator cannot be do this, do that, which it tended to be in
the States. It has to be, well, what do you think? And that
made a huge difference in the success we've had over the— I'm still working with
Dave this week, you know, I mean, that's
how close we are still. And the reality
is, because of that mutual respect to say, well, you've got a great idea there,
I've got a great idea, you know, you work together. And I think what happened
with the stateside, and I don't know whether Ron thinks this because Ron's had to
deal with it, I'm sure, and Steve Young, I'm
sure did, but the, the, um, there is a difference. Um, but you, what
I found going over there and basing myself
there for several years is that you could maneuver around that
because when they, when the people come out of the, uh, federal
or state and go into private practice, they too find it difficult going because
it's a different way of doing And the other thing I think there
is very significantly different, this
is on the civil side, is injunctive relief. English UK
civil injunctive relief. The American lawyers go, oh my God, you can't do this, you
can't do that. But of course, if
you've got the appropriate jurisdiction hook, you can do it. And this is where
I think there's a massive opportunity still now because no one's really,
I mean, you guys at Mishcon have done more than
most. Yeah, but there's still so much to be done. And the lads
at Quillan, I like very much, you know, Quillan Law.
I like those guys very much because they get it, but at the
same time they're still restricted because of the way the setup is done. I mean,
the use of injunctive relief, you know, the old Anton Pillar
as it was, the Morava, and the best, the good old Norwich Pharmaceuticals,
which are just brilliant, you know. But of course the American side, they've never
heard of them. No. So I think, so that's the ability to try and
sort of cross over between the two jurisdictions, to be honest. So
I have a quick— there's so much to cover. I know we're going to have
to do a John Brennan Part 2, Part 3.
We probably create a whole Netflix series on you, John. But
because it's already nearly 5 o'clock and I'm very conscious that I don't want to
suck up too much, but I've been looking at the various things,
your bio. Tell us a bit about the Glencore case, which I think was, was
one of the biggest that you did, was it, or one of the most challenging
in the private sector? There was two
parts to it. Okay. And there's two ways of looking at it as
well. I think the big issue was— and I'm not— I can't go
into detail, obviously, you know that. But it relied
upon informants. Yeah. It relied upon informants being able
to be corroborated in different jurisdictions. Okay, in other words, there was evidence in
one jurisdiction that was corroborative of somebody in
a different jurisdiction, which is unusual. To do.
You've then got an ability to actually say, um, what the most
important thing in that whole case was— attention to detail. No, can you, without giving
away too much, can you tell us what the core wrongdoing was? What was it
that you were investigating, or do we have to move on to something
else? Uh, I think there's one that's all in the public domain that
we shared exactly the same thing, which was International
Rectifier. And that's probably the main thing. And that was falsification. It's,
this is all, it's the same, really. But it's the
falsification of the numbers at the end of
the quarter to hit a particular expectation on the street. Yeah. So which
obviously kicked in the bonuses for the senior people. Yeah. But in
the IR particular, the area with that, that
the bad guys used within was Japan. Now, I'm sure you've been to Japan,
you know, it's very difficult to get people to
talk to you in Japan, one of my best ever informants, call
it what you will. And so therefore, we were able over a period of
time to get the confidence and the— and
I spent a long time with this guy. And eventually,
this is how crazy it is. We're in an HR hearing. He says,
I need to go to the bathroom. I said, I'll come with you just to
get out of the room for 10 minutes. He gave me his telephone number. Two
days later, we're sitting in a hotel in the middle of
Tokyo. And he's telling me everything.. So there was a
stage where he said, actually, this guy knows, he knows.
And therefore once he helped, so the whole of
the office helped. And that whole office
gave evidence to the DOJ and the SEC in Hawaii. And not one of them
got prosecuted. So we did a non-prosecution agreement with the government of
the US, right, to allow it to happen,
to give them immunity. Exactly. So, so there's, that was a probably,
probably the one I'm most proud of because it was, it was really thinking
outside the box. And how did, how can you put your finger on what it
was, or was it just
this chemistry connection between you and
this Japanese guy? It was, um, two things. It was patience, you know, you had
to be patient, you had to wait because it was clear he wanted
to talk. I see. But he, but, but
you know that honor is everything in Japan, um, and therefore it was being
very difficult for him to say what he
needed to say. But eventually, just by chatting, chatting, chatting, listening,
you know, treating him with respect. Yeah, great deal of respect. He loved golf, which
was great. So I could talk about the Masters and all that sort of
stuff. You know, we talked hours about
bloody golf, you know. But eventually, he came across. And
that, that also then morphed into another job where the bad guys actually stole
the IP of that company going forward. We
were able to almost— we extended into yet another project,
if you like, out of it, where we set up
a covert office next door to the office that sprung up. And obviously,
we befriended people, and next thing you know is we've been invited in to
see the formulas on the wall, which of course is our formula that
was stolen. So, you know, so that's a game where you
use techniques that you had in the police that you use in the corporate world.
And of course, no one was, no one went to prison. This
was all to save the company, which it did. Share price tanked when it had
to put it, it's a public company, had
to go into Ks and Qs. It tanked, but it
still survived and eventually it sold and it sold significantly to, I can't
remember now, Lucid, I think one of the big tech companies.
So that was a classic win, but also proved the, you know, it's all channel
stuffing, millions of dollars at the end of the quarter. Now. But Glencore, because Glencore
is well known, but I have to
be a little bit careful. Got it. So sadly, we're
coming towards the end. But what
I want to ask you is, you've done so many investigations, you've achieved
so much, what is yet to achieve? Is there a case? Is there
a client you'd like to act for? What is it that
is going to be for you the next challenge, the next sunshine, sunshine mountain to
climb, John? I thought you were going to bring that up. Yeah, I
did teach you well to do the social
media. You did, you did. It's stuck in my brain. Yeah, I still do it
every now and then, by the way, if I'm really
bad. Absolutely. Um, I think, uh, where do I want to go? One, I
still love it. I still enjoy doing it. I've still got the same team
that, that, you know, we're getting older, but they're still as enthusiastic and as skillful
as ever. I've got a couple of new guys
that come through that are brilliant. I think there is a
transfer coming in terms of what type of cases now the corporate world looks at.
I think everyone thinks the answer is going to be AI. I don't agree with
that. I'd love to be able to find a job that I can show
it's not AI, that it's the human element rather than anything else. One of those
I think is more likely to be in
the whistleblower space. I think whistleblower space is a huge market. Yes, it
looks like it's really something that companies are starting to take notice of.
So is Is that the area that you would like to
make your name in as Mr. Whistleblower Expert, do you think? Yeah,
yeah, probably. Yeah. Because I see there's so much opportunity
because it really is basically someone who believes and whatever the motivations are, you
still have to put all the skill set to get the corroborative
evidence that you need to support that whistleblower application. Now, as
you know, in the United States, they've got
new AMLA Anti-Money Laundering Act 2022. There's all different priorities now, but
that's a recovery. For example, say if the banks are taken to task because a
lot of this is the big banks that
just take no notice of, you know, transaction
monitoring of their Bank Secrecy Act obligations, etc., etc. Then if
you then go after the banks, then a third, up to a third
of that recovery can go to the whistleblower. Do you
think that's— on the final question, do you
think that's a model that should be adopted in the UK? Absolutely.
Absolutely. And I think it will be. I think there's a move slightly at the
moment. I think we mentioned it the other day when
I saw it, but I
think there is absolutely nothing to stop it.
I think the upside will be we're all hit with banks. Everybody, you can't help
it. It's the banks, the banks, the banks, the banks. But when you start looking
at some of the egregious nature of what the banks do, the big banks, and
these are major, major banks. They have to be booked to book. They
have to be
because otherwise it's not. So you've got, you know, Mr. Trump wants to take them
out. You take the banking system out of them. They
haven't got anything. If they can't move money and
you move money in US dollars. Yeah, they're totally
stymied. But the banks allow it to happen. So his true priority and you know
what Mr. Trump's like, it won't be one day with this, another
day that. But yeah. There's a memo called the Transnational Organized
Crime— I think it's Transnational Crime Memo— that Pam
Bondi did. And it's really worth looking at, mate, because it's— it really lays out
something I think is very significant in terms
of taking out cartels. And of course, they've linked it to
fentanyl. Yeah, obviously, that's the big drug situation in the States. But at the end
of the day, you take that and you put it
under this jurisdiction, the UK jurisdiction, There are plenty
of similarities and plenty of things that are identical that if one
looks at the current legislation and what it could be, I think there's a
huge opportunity. So if I'm looking at something in the future, that's what I'd like
to do. That's what you'd like to do. Become known as the sort
of— if you want to do a whistleblower, you've
got to, first of all, people like yourself and
me together. Come to JB. Well, pull it apart. Oh, before I go, I've
got to ask you your middle names. I didn't realize until I
looked at Companies House
you've got some amazing middle names.
John Vincent Francis. Yeah, JVF. Vincent, are you a great-grandfather
or what? No, unfortunately that's my big sister, like Vincent Ball
on the TV. That's how bad that was. Um, Francis is the family
name. Everyone— my dad was Daniel Francis, my sister Francis, my mum
was Mary. All my kids are Francis in the middle. Vincent.
And if I really, really push it, my confirmation name
was Michael. So I'm a John Vincent Francis Michael. Oh my God. Yeah.
I'm a good Irish Catholic. Listen, I can
say the time has gone like in a click of a finger. John,
it's been wonderful. We'll carry on when we
see each other later this week, but it was lovely to go down a
bit of memory lane. Thanks very much. Take care. Look forward to
it. Bye. Thank you for listening. And if
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