Source: Sunday Times (UK) Contact: 20 Sep 1998 Author: Nicholas Rufford, Home Affairs Editor 'SERPICO' CLAIMS SCOTLAND YARD ELITE RAN DRUG CARTEL 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". - --- Checked-by: Pat Dolan