Michael Howard was last night at the centre of extraordinary claims by a drugs baron who alleges that he paid a £400,000 'bribe' to the former Home Secretary.
Career criminal John Haase told a Labour MP that he was released from prison early after making the payment via one of Mr Howard's relatives.
Haase and fellow drug lord Paul Bennett were released 11 months into an 18-year jail sentence for heroin smuggling after Mr Howard approved a royal pardon in exchange for the pair turning 'supergrass' in 1996, the court heard.
But the men are accused of fixing the pardons by merely pretending to help the police and giving bogus tip- offs about gun caches they arranged to have planted by accomplices.
The prosecution allege that Haase's current wife Deborah, 37, and their friend Sharon Knowles, 36, were among those who helped to orchestrate the scam.
Haase told MP Peter Kilfoyle that their plot included a £400,000 payment to Mr Howard's cousin Simon Bakerman, the court heard.
Mr Bakerman allegedly collected the cash from Haase's Liverpool home. Mr Kilfoyle, giving evidence at Southwark Crown Court, said that Haase told him about the alleged bribe when he signed a statement in prison in 2004.
Haase, 59, and his nephew Bennett, 44, were arrested in July 1993 following a major investigation into an 'international drug trafficking operation'.
The court heard that they hatched a plan to reduce their sentences by telling HM Customs and Excise they would become informants.
After they were jailed in 1995, the judge in the case wrote privately to Mr Howard asking for a royal pardon.
He had been told that the information which the pair passed on to the authorities was so sensitive that their lives 'would be at risk' if it became known they had become informers.
The then Home Secretary approved the 'Royal Prerogative of Mercy' and cut their sentences to five years. They were released in July 1996 - ten months and two weeks after being sentenced.
Mr Kilfoyle told the court he had spent some time investigating the men's early release, and had visited Haase in prison.
It was on one of these visits, the court heard, that Haase made the allegation that he had bribed Mr Howard. continues here
![Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War](http://patbuchananbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/bk-pjb-chuw165.jpg "Churchill_Hitler_the_Unnecessary_War\")
Post a comment on AAWR
0 Responses to "Michael Howard, the drugs baron and an extraordinary £400,000 bribery claim"Post a Comment
We welcome contributions from all sides of the debate, at AAWR comment is free, AAWR may edit and/or delete your comments if abusive, threatening, illegal or libellous according to our understanding of, no emails will be published. Your comments may be published on other nationalist media sites worldwide.