July 31st, 2007
‘Cocky’ Warren, Rich-List drugs baron, returns to UK
Britain’s most notorious drugs trafficker, and the only one to feature on The Sunday Times Rich List, has returned to the country a free man.
Curtis “Cocky” Warren amassed a [pound]85m fortune from the drugs trade before he was jailed in Holland in 1996. Last week, he was released after a successful court appeal.
On Thursday evening, Warren, 44, stepped off the ferry at Harwich, in Essex, looking fit and well and every bit as “cocky” as his nickname suggests. He was met by two men. After a 245-mile drive back to Liverpool, Warren popped in to see his mother, who has been unwell, then checked into a city-centre hotel at 3am.
But his journey home had not been plain sailing: Warren had attempted to book on an easyJet flight from Amsterdam to Liverpool, but the budget airline refused to carry him.
Warren had been expected to remain in prison until 2012, for organising a [pound]125m drug-smuggling operation. Jailed for 12 years, “Cocky” had an extra four years added to his sentenced for manslaughter after he killed a fellow inmate in a prison yard brawl. “Head-butting Curtis is a bit like head-butting a brick wall,” his solicitor Keith Dyson observed dryly at the time. Warren, brought up in Liverpool’s notorious Toxteth area, pleaded self-defence, but was found to have used excessive force in the fight. He appealed against the extra sentence.
Mr Dyson said yesterday: “The grounds for the appeal was that the evidence that was available didn’t really support the charges.” After speaking to his client as he arrived at Harwich, Mr Dyson said Warren wants to “get on with his life in a positive way”. Peter Walsh, co-author of Warren’s biography, Cocky, said: “News of Warren’s freedom will bring a new and very unwanted headache to a police force already involved in keeping the lid on a highly- volatile situation. Everyone knows how significant Merseyside and its criminals are in not only the national, but the international drugs trade, and here you have one of the most significant narcotics figures of the past 20 years coming home.”
Warren, who moved to the Netherlands in 1995 after a year on remand in Leeds until a drugs case was dropped, invested his ill- gotten gains in many countries in banks, property and casinos, a total believed to be about [pound]85m. He apparently has a photographic memory and can memorise bank account numbers.
He was said at one point to own almost 300 properties in Liverpool, hotels and petrol stations in Turkey, mansions in Merseyside and Holland and a Bulgarian winery.
British financial investigators were able to identify only a small part of his hidden wealth. In 2004, a High Court judge ordered a record [pound]3.5m of drug-smuggling money, which Warren claimed belonged to him, must be confiscated.
A former Customs chief, David Raynes, said: “This is one where you would think the Serious Organised Crime Agency, Inland Revenue and Customs will see what more they can do. Accountants and other people around Warren should be aware that if they sell property or investments on his behalf they may be open to criminal proceedings.”