The Iceman: The Rise and Fall of a Crime Lord (30 page)

Operation Maple was a large operation involving officers from two police forces, Customs and Excise and the then SDEA. If it was designed to cause panic inside other major Scottish crime groups, then it worked.

By the end of this long Wednesday, the pub and the service station were amongst the businesses frozen by the tough new legislation. Also restrained by the authorities were cars, bank accounts, cash and several homes including Stirton’s. The Crown Office alleged that Stirton had even laundered dirty money through bank accounts held in the names of five of his six children plus the three children of his murdered brother-in-law Tony McGovern. They claimed that Stirton was ‘reasonably believed to have been involved in the supply of controlled drugs since at least 1983’ and revealed details of police surveillance operations.

One case monitored Stirton and an Alex Hughson in 1997 on a ferry travelling from Calais to Dover. Also on the ferry was HGV driver Mark Haig, whose truck was carrying kilos of cannabis, amphetamines and a handgun. Once at Dover, the three men met up at a motorway service station and later, during a search in Uddingston, Lanarkshire, the truck yielded its illicit cargo. This resulted in Haig – who was deemed to be the mule – being convicted along with a fourth man who had also previously been spotted with Stirton.

The books of Stirton’s mail-order pornography business Love Boat showed strong profits but the accountant who was supposed to have prepared this healthy balance sheet denied having done so. These accounts could have helped secure a mortgage for Stirton’s Mugdock home. Police long suspected the porn business was just an early vehicle for laundering cash.

Janice Leonard confessed to the police that she had used bogus accounts to obtain a mortgage for her Uddingston home when the cash to pay the loan had actually come from her boyfriend Anderson, Stirton’s business partner.

The most recent figure to be put on the total value of that day’s haul is £5.6 million. Police hailed Operation Maple as a huge success but it was a long way from over.

The new Proceeds of Crime laws were different to conventional criminal laws. In theory, the crooks need to illustrate that their wealth is legitimate. It was a major legal shift and people like Stirton were squirming. The well-spoken fitness fanatic and marathon runner hired Richard Keen, one of Scotland’s most skilled QCs, to fight his corner.

During the first court hearing weeks later, it emerged that the seized Shell garage of Stirton and Anderson had an annual turnover of £12 million, with £6 million of that coming by way of cash. Despite selling some of the cheapest fuel in Britain, it seemed hard to explain how almost £16,500 in banknotes passed through the till every single day of the year. Crown lawyers told how they would have to keep the identities of witnesses secret for fear of retribution were they to be unmasked while Stirton’s legal team attacked ‘the flagrant disregard’ of their human rights. Following lunch, it was agreed that the garage and the pub would be returned to the pair under strict conditions.

In March, Stirton was arrested in Edinburgh after flying in from a trip to London. He and Anderson appeared in court on criminal charges of extortion and money laundering but they were later dropped, a development which was a sign of things to come as the early confidence of the police began to ebb away.

Stirton and Anderson’s legal team got to work. The first blow for the Crown case was the revelation that criminal convictions, which they had attributed to Anderson, did not exist. The pair’s costly legal team then set about the task of unpicking Operation Maple as Scotland’s flagship Proceeds of Crime case became bogged down in a legal quagmire.

More than four years after those triumphant raids, the case against Stirton and his finances continues to limp through the legal system. Since the raids, Stirton has fallen out with the McGovern brothers over their suspicions that he had ripped them off. This sparked a bitter feud that still threatens violence. He and Anderson have already rejected an offer to settle the case by jointly handing over just £175,000 on the condition that they would not be able to sue over the process. Critics fear the case, which was meant to highlight the new legislation’s sweeping powers, has only exposed its inadequacies. In recent years, there has been greater emphasis on confiscating the fortunes of convicted criminals rather than attempting to seize assets from those only suspected of crime.

Another issue that Stirton’s lawyers pounced upon relates to the true identity of ‘Louise Rivers’, which was discovered to be a pseudonym – something that had not been declared to the court at the outset. The Crown lawyers said that this had been an ‘innocent oversight’ and the reasons for anonymity were that ‘it would put at risk her own safety and that of her staff if she practised under her own name’. Stirton’s lawyers were to withdraw attempts to establish her real identity perhaps because, by then, there was no need.

Away from the Court of Session in Edinburgh and unknown to the legal team, a plot to unmask the enigmatic accountant had already been hatched. In order to find out who she was or, at the very least, the name and location of her true employers, an apparently ordinary package was sent to her through the post from Scotland. Contained within the parcel was an electronic tracking device. As that day’s post was collected from the branch of Mail Boxes Etc. in Buckingham Palace Road, the transmitter was sending its signal. Someone in Scotland was determined to find out who she was and they had gone to extraordinary lengths to locate her.

Her pursuers’ audacious scheme to track down the mysterious accountant failed after the bug was intercepted before reaching her workplace and a senior judge, Lord Macfadyen, has since ruled that it would be a criminal offence to reveal her – or his – identity. Louise will continue her work of asset stripping Scotland’s untouchables without fear of reprisals.

45

Jamie Soprano

The surveillance officers tailing Jamie Stevenson in the summer of 2003 did not instantly recognise his route as he left home heading into the city. Folklore’s surveillance offensive against the gang boss had only been launched a few weeks earlier and Stevenson’s regular haunts and habits were still uncharted. Their target picked his way through the lunchtime traffic into Glasgow’s southside before turning into Mansionhouse Road, a tree-lined avenue in the Langside neighbourhood.

The tailing officers speculated that he was perhaps heading to the popular Boswell Hotel for a meeting but, on reaching the hotel, Stevenson did not turn left into the car park but instead turned right into the drive of the imposing sandstone mansion opposite. The handsome, discreetly extended building was the Priory Hospital, the only private clinic in Scotland specialising in the treatment and management of acute psychiatric disorders. Stevenson was going to see his therapist.

The Scots gang boss had started going to the Priory a year before in the summer of 2002 to discuss a range of mental health issues with the hospital’s expert counsellors. This imposing man was feared throughout the underworld, he was suspected of a series of murders and he was leading an intricate and international drugs-trafficking network. Yet behind this most serious and organised criminal lay a troubled mind. One source, aware of his treatment, said, ‘He had anxiety issues, anger-management issues, some problems sleeping, a little paranoia. Let’s face it – he was Tony Soprano.’

The police team tracking Stevenson to his regular sessions at the Priory in the years that followed were also not slow to compare the Scots crime boss with the head of the famous but fictional crime family. The relationship between Soprano and his psychotherapist has been at the heart of the acclaimed US television crime drama since the first episode screened in 1999. Soprano, played by actor James Gandolfini, loves his wife, is devoted to his children and is a loyal friend. He’s a charismatic leader, a skilled manager and a brutish thug capable of barbaric violence. He leads an effective organised crime gang, lives under constant FBI surveillance and suffers panic attacks, anxiety and depression.

A source with knowledge of Stevenson’s business and health issues says the comparisons between the TV mobster and the Scot are inescapable. He said:

Another associate says it was not surprising that the pressures of Stevenson’s lifestyle took a toll on his health.

Professor David Cooke, a forensic clinical psychologist at Glasgow Caledonian University, has spent years analysing the mental health of Scottish criminals and believes many suffer personality disorders. For one of his research projects, he studied hundreds of prisoners at the city’s Barlinnie Prison and concluded that between fifty and sixty per cent of them had psychological issues. He said:

Professor Cooke believes antisocial personality disorders are common among criminals who are incapable of an emotional response to their actions but he also suspects that major criminals who have been breaking the law over many years do not share the personality traits that often help to end other criminals’ careers far earlier. He said:

At the Priory, part of the chain of clinics famous for offering a haven for celebrities in rehab, Stevenson took part in group therapy and one-to-one sessions. Like Tony Soprano, whose sessions with Dr Jennifer Melfi are a vital part of the TV drama, Stevenson’s therapist was a woman.

Renowned psychiatrist Glen Gabbard wrote a book,
The Psychology of the Sopranos
, after becoming a fan of the Mafia drama and, in it, he discusses the criminal’s psychological symptoms. He concludes that ‘Tony Soprano is split down the middle’ – vertically split, according to the textbooks. The division allows the two parts of his character – the doting dad and family man and the lying, violent criminal – to remain in separate mental compartments. Dr Gabbard writes:

However, in his 2002 book, Houston-based Gabbard decides Tony Soprano is not a psychopath despite his capacity for lying and violence.