Gangster Presents... Catching the Kingpins

A 6-part true crime podcast documenting the biggest organised crime bust in British policing history. It happens in 2020 when police in France penetrate an encrypted phone network called EncroChat. According to police, the phones were used exclusively by criminals. For over two months, police forces across Europe were reading the secret communications of major league criminal networks. The Metropolitan Police, working with the National Crime Agency and other forces, used this information to uncover the workings of organised crime groups. “It was like being in a room with them and they are talking freely, and they don't see you there,” says DCI Driss Hayoukane, the Senior Investigating Officer who led the Met’s EncroChat operation. Police went public about the EncroChat hack in July 2020. This is the first time that the inside story of some of the Met’s biggest EncroChat cases has been told to a broadcaster. Talking exclusively to BBC Sounds, police officers reveal how they used the gangsters’ messages to uncover arms dealing and expose murder plots as well as major drug trafficking and money laundering operations. Stories featured in the series include:

- A murder plot unearthed by the Met in a joint operation with South Wales police. - Two apparently legitimate businessmen, living in a Buckinghamshire village, whose wealth really came from cocaine trafficking and major league money laundering, - A corrupt police officer who was working for a notorious London crime group.

At a time when the Metropolitan Police Service has been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons, it’s a story of an extraordinary success: nearly 1000 arrests; over 400 convictions; the seizure of £19 million in cash, three tonnes of Class A and B drugs and 49 guns. Presenter Mobeen Azhar does not shy away from what have been difficult issues for the Met police: an officer from the Met’s anti-corruption unit speaks for the first time about how hacked EncroChat messages helped to expose the worst case of police corruption he had ever seen; and Mobeen asks the officer leading the Met’s EncroChat investigation about the experience of being an ethnic minority officer in a force found to be institutionally racist. Catching the Kingpins is a BBC Studios Production for BBC Sounds. Presenter: Mobeen Azhar Series Producer: Andrew Hosken Editor and Executive Producer: Innes Bowen Sound designer: Peregrine Andrews Assistant Commissioner: Lorraine Okuefuna Commissioning Editor: Louise Kattenhorn Production Executive: Laura Jordan-Rowell Creative Director for BBC Studios: Georgia Moseley Unit Manager: Lucy Bannister Production manager: Elaina Boateng Development Executive: Anya Saunders Editorial Policy Advice: Su Pennington Legal advice: Hashim Mude and Andrew Downey Consulting editor: Steve BoultonProduction Co-ordinator: Juliette Harvey

Thanks also to Beena Khetani, Adele Humbert, Hugh Levinson, Ali Rezakhani, Rhiannon Cobb, and Jack Griffith.

A bloody and bitter feud between two of Glasgow's most notorious crime families which has raged for more than two decades, leading to violence and murder. Why the Daniel crime group and the Lyons crime group fell out isn't clear.

The story goes it was linked to the theft of a stash of drugs - or because the Lyons were encroaching on Daniel territory. Whatever the cause, the dispute exploded into a series of astonishingly violent tit for tat attacks which have cast a dark shadow over the city of Glasgow. The most high profile - the very public assassination of Daniel's enforcer Kevin "Gerbil" Carroll. He was shot dead in a hail of bullets in front of terrified shoppers in an Asda car park in 2010.

Delving into Glasgow's gangland past and its history of violent crime, the series hears from former gangsters, ordinary members of the public caught up in this vicious turf war and the police officers fighting to take down the mobsters. Many of those at the heart of the violence are now locked up in prison - or dead. But the fear is that this is a feud which is so ingrained it could go on for generations to come.

Presenter Livvy HaydockSeries producer: Paul GrantProducer: Patrick KiteleyJournalism assistant: Tim FernleyEditor and executive producer: Carl Johnston

• No. of episodes: 56
• Latest episode: 2024-12-31

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