Criminal web that links The Gold to a brutal farmhouse murder

McKay killers' brother was 'a networker', Haul was split six ways but two got conned

- TOM PETTIFOR

BRINK'S-MAT robbery cash was hidden offshore with the help of a criminal quizzed over the murder of Muriel McKay, it has been revealed.

Adam Hosein was laundering millions for drug lord Pablo Escobar when he provided legal and business introductions for a British crook laundering the proceeds of the 1983 £26million gold heist, a source said.

Hosein had previously been questioned about Muriel's 1969 murder. She was abducted and held in a Hertfordshire farmhouse, the kidnappers having mistaken her for the then-wife of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, then killed.

Adam's younger brothers, Arthur and Nizamodeen Hosein, were convicted of the murder at the Old Bailey in 1970 and jailed, despite her body having never been found.

Adam, who died in 2021, fled the UK for his native Trinidad and later settled in Florida, where he ran front companies for Escobar in the 80s.

An investigation by our sister paper the Daily Mirror can now reveal that in January 1987 a man suspected of laundering proceeds of Britain's biggest ever robbery, flew from London to Trinidad to meet Hosein. Police records show the pair then travelled on to Panama and Miami, Florida.

Asked earlier this month about his dealings with Hosein, the man, now in his 70s and who we are not naming for legal reasons, said: "While Adam Hosein may have been busy in other 'arenas', he had no direct involvement in BM [Brink's-Mat] other than facilitating legal and business intros, networking etc." The revelations come as the latest series of BBC drama The Gold, starring Hugh Bonneville as DCS Brian Boyce, now focuses on Scotland Yard's attempts to trace the heist proceeds.

The show, also starring Charlotte Spencer as DI Nicki Jennings and Tom Cullen as dodgy gold dealer John Palmer, opens with the stolen bullion having been split into two, with one half hidden in a disused Cornish tin mine for years before being moved around the world.