GOLDFINGER ...my part in his downfall

HE was the timeshare fraudster and criminal kingpin who felt untouchable after being cleared by a jury over the 1983 Brink's-Mat robbery.

- BY TOM PETTIFOR Crime Editor

She was the former Fleet Street crime reporter turned TV producer for ITV's The Cook Report who helped to finally bring him down.

On the 10th anniversary of John "Goldfinger" Palmer's murder, SYLVIA JONES reveals how they snared the underworld's notorious Mr Big.

JOHN "Goldfinger" Palmer was in the elegant lounge of London's Ritz hotel when the beginning of the end arrived.

He was sitting at a tea table with two Burmese opium producers in June 1994, celebrating finalising a £65million-a-year money laundering deal, when a large figure loomed over him and announced: "Roger Cook, Central Television. We've come to talk to you."

It was a voice familiar to the 10 million viewers who regularly tuned in to watch television's biggest investigator uncover, confront and pursue criminals and wrongdoers.

And it marked the start of Palmer's descent from a man with a royal-level fortune and a life of yachts, fast cars, Rolexes and helicopters to prison - and, ultimately, his death in a suburban back garden.

Palmer, a former gold dealer, had risen to fame and fortune smelting gold bars stolen in the Brink's-Mat bullion robbery 11 years earlier.

On trial at the Old Bailey in 1987, charged with conspiracy to handle the stolen gold, he admitted melting down large amounts at his mansion in Bath, but claimed not to know it was stolen. When the jury acquitted him he blew them a kiss.

He went on to set up a huge timeshare fraud operation, cajoling or intimidating thousands of folk out of their hard-earned savings and ruling the holiday island of Tenerife with his posse of violent, steroid-fuelled musclemen.

This ruthless "business model" was essential for Palmer's real activities of laundering ever-increasing amounts of dirty money for his underworld criminal cronies, thieving Russian oligarchs, and other corrupt government officials and politicians who plundered their own countries.