The dapper godfather who ran his empire like a blue-chip company-News-UK-Crime-TimesOnline

The godfather who ran his empire like a blue-chip company-News-UK-Crime-TimesOnline: " From The Times
March 10, 2007
The dapper godfather who ran his empire like a blue-chip company
Terry Adams made so much money he was able to retire at the age of 35. In the end he was trapped, like Al Capone, by the taxman
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Stewart Tendler and Alan Hamilton

He looks like an ageing dandy, a cross between Liberace and Peter Stringfellow, but he was at the top of his profession and controlled his empire with such ruthless efficiency that he could have run BP or ICI. He even claimed that by the time he was 35 he had made enough to retire from the sharp end of the business.

Yet Terry Adams’s profession was organised crime, murder and drugs. He was godfather of the nearest underworld network Britain had to the Mafia. He was the Capone of his time and, like Capone, it was the taxman who finally nailed him.

Yesterday at the Old Bailey, Adams was sentenced to seven years in jail for money laundering.

Adams had so much money he did not know where it all was, and merely summoned an underling when he needed cash. In luxurious retirement he told associates that he wanted to “kosher up” — go straight — and swore to his own mother that he had left a life of crime behind.
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* Loophole may let him start again after prison

He was ever the dapper gent in his velvet-collared overcoats. He lived in a £2 million house in North London crammed with stolen antiques, a far cry from his upbringing on the rough Barnsbury estate in Islington. His family and close associates are reputedly worth about £200 million and are feared far more than the Krays ever were. Adams was so proud of it all, and he guarded his criminal reputation as a board of directors would guard a trademark.

It has taken a decade, and many millions of public money, to bring Adams to justice. He admitted a £1 million money scam in an effort to hide his ill-gotten gains from HM Inspector of Taxes, one of the lesser of his multifarious crimes. But charges against his wife Ruth were droppd and yesterday he waved to her in the public gallery. Joanna Barnes, the widow of his murdered financial adviser, was fined for after confessing to fraud involving a £15,000 loan.

Adams had thought himself untouchable, until the Revenue began to wonder how he managed to live so well. They investigated how a man with no employment or national insurance record could live so well for 15 years. He claimed he only had £50 in cash but settled his tax debts for £95,000. He then claimed to be a £200-a-week consultant working in general PR and as a minder. “I can consult about anything you want to,” he once told a friend. But he never knew the address of the firms he was supposed to own which were used to fool the Inland Revenue into believing that he had a legitimate income.

When police raided his home in 2003 they found £500,000 of antiques, mostly stolen, nearly £60,000 in cash hidden in the attic and £48,000 worth of jewellery — all loose change to a villain of Adams’s magnitude.

In fact, he had made so much money that he boasted of retiring from active crime 20 years ago. He just took his cut while others did the dirty work. And it was very dirty indeed. He flew first class, stayed at the best hotels, indulged a passion for expensive jewellery and sent his daughter, Skye, to private school and then to drama school.

Armed robbery, drug dealing on a huige scale and terrifying intimidation were how he achieved such a lifestyle. His henchmen are thought to have been responsible for about 30 deaths.

Detectives with the help of MI5 had bugged his house and been listening in for 18 months. One senior detective who heard the tapes said it was like listening to The Sopranos. On one occasion Adams was recorded boasting: “When I hit someone with something, I do them damage. On my baby’s life, his kneecap came right out . . . all white, all bone.”

Ordering a henchman to deal with a recalcitrant debtor he told him: “You have got to liven him up, put the fear of God into him, mate, so he knows it’s only down to you that he’s walking about and breathing fresh air.”

As Adams stood in the dock yesterday, Andrew Mitchell, QC, prosecuting, told a packed court: “It is suggested that Terrence Adams was one of the country’s most feared and revered organised criminals. He comes with a pedigree as one of a family whose name had a currency all of its own in the underworld.”

He had managed to avoid conviction by keeping away from the dirty end of the business and had, Mr Mitchell said, taken the same attitude to the court case, employing delaying tactics and even consulting psychiatrists about his mental health before finally deciding to plead guilty.

His gang, which his brothers, Patsy and Tommy, allegedly ran with him, is heavily involved in the London drugs scene. Dealers would even boast that they were working for the fearsome Adams family — the “A-Team” — to bolster their credibility.

The gang also owned clubs and discos in North London, were silent partners in clubs in the West End and Soho, ran protection rackets and reportedly commissioned armed robberies from which they took a cut. One detective on the case said: “Never get carried away with the idea that organised criminals focus on one thing. They will try anything that will make a lot of money.”

At one stage the brothers tried to invest in the London Arena and Tottenham Hotspur, although they are said to be Arsenal fans. Adams ran his business like a modern-day multinational company. It is said the gang even imported to London the Mafia assassination trick of gunmen travelling as pillion passengers on motorbikes.

Such was the gang’s power and reputation that it even ran a franchise operation, allowing other gangs to use its name at a cost of £250,000 per operation. The condition: pay within a week, or else.

Adams cut his teeth in crime early, running protection rackets with Patsy and Tommy in the local markets before moving into armed robbery. Hatton Garden became a base and at one time Tommy ran a jewellery shop there. Saul Nahome, one of the Garden’s jewel dealers, was recruited to become a highly trusted financial adviser to the family. He was later murdered.

By the Nineties the gang was very powerful. As the drug markets grew, so did the Adams’s wealth as the gang built up contacts with the South American cartels.

Its reputation for violence was also embellished. In the Eighties it provoked a shoot-out with the Reillys, a rival Islington gang. Remarkably, no one was killed. In 1989 Terry Gooderham, a club auditor, and his girlfriend were killed and dumped in Epping Forest, Essex. Mr Gooderham allegedly crossed the gang over cash.

In 1991 later “Mad” Frankie Fraser, a gangland veteran, was shot in the head outside a London club in another attack attributed to Adams’s gang. Claude Moseley, a former British high jump champion and an associate of Adams, was stabbed with a samurai sword by Gilbert Wynter, one of Adams’s enforcers. It was claimed that Mr Moseley had short-changed the family. Mr Wynter was acquitted at the Old Bailey in 1994 when the prosecution’s chief witness refused to testify. The hitman later disappeared, possibly concreted into the foundations of the Millennium Dome.

David McKenzie, a Mayfair financier, paid a high price for losing £1.5 million for Adams. He was summoned to the godfather’s house to explain. “Everyone stood up when he walked in. He looked like a star; he was immaculately dressed in a long black coat and white frilly shirt. He was totally in command,” he said.

Several days later Mr McKenzie was savagely beaten. The man accused of the attack stood trial at the Old Bailey in 1999, but the jury accepted his version that he had broken up a fight between McKenzie and another man.

The Adams brothers were gaining a Teflon reputation; no accusation would stick. Tommy was acquitted in 1985 of acting as a courier, moving gold bullion stolen in the £26 million Brinks-Mat robbery out of London. Patsy, who had been jailed for armed robbery, was acquitted of importing three tons of cannabis.

With the managing director now in jail and both brothers in Spain, there is speculation about the future of the firm. But the Adams family long ago learnt the art of survival.

Hunting for the hidden asstes

—Special investigators are launching a worldwide hunt for the assets of Terry Adams in order to pay a multimillion-pound defence bill after Judge Pontious said that the gang leader had to pay the “colossal and perhaps unprecedented” legal bill

—Throughout the four years that Adams was awaiting trial he refused to give the legal-aid authorities any details of his income and assets Judge Pontious said Adams had also constantly delayed his prosecution and had sacked two teams of QCs and solicitors The judge said the public would be “shocked and greatly concerned” that Adams and his wife, against whom charges were dropped, should have had their defence wholly funded by the taxpayers

—After more than a decade of investigation by police, Customs, the Revenue and MI5, Adams’s millions are still hidden

—He is known to have a North London house worth at least £750,000; £50,000 in cash seized when he was arrested; an interest in a villa in Cyprus; an interest in a yacht, also in Cyprus; an arts and antiques collection worth £500,000, which includes stolen works; and jewellery worth £48,000 which was found in his home "