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The richest Milkman in the West
Independent on Sunday, The, Apr 8, 2007 by Ed Caesar
Brian "The Milkman" Wright has made his final delivery. On Tuesday, at Woolwich Crown Court, the man estimated to be Britain's richest criminal was sentenced to 30 years in jail. In front of a jury - who were protected from identification by a security screen - a judge found Wright, 60, guilty of conspiring to import millions of pounds' worth of cocaine into Britain. "There is no mitigation," said Wright, before being taken down to the cells.
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Wright's conviction brings to an end a flamboyant criminal career, in which he not only became one of Britain's most influential smugglers (he was called "The Milkman" because he always delivered), but a race fixer and a friend to the stars. He lived in the best villas and apartments in London and Spain. He drank champagne at the finest nightclubs. He entertained friends at his private boxes at Ascot and Newmarket. But a very different life awaits him now. The length of his prison term, say Wright's lawyers, means their client will die behind bars.
In the 1990s, Wright's gang swamped Britain with cocaine. Using small oceangoing boats - and occasionally light aeroplanes - Wright transferred the drugs from Venezuela to the Caribbean, and from the Caribbean to England's South Coast. In 1998 alone, he is thought to have been responsible for shipping two tons of cocaine to Britain, leading one Customs officer to remark, "The cocaine was coming in faster than people could snort it."
By the time of his arrest near Malaga in Spain, in 2005, Wright had smuggled cocaine worth [pound]360m into Great Britain. A recent survey for the BBC3 Underworld Rich List suggested that Wright had earned himself a [pound]100m fortune in the process, although a friend says that number might be conservative.
Smuggling, though, was not the Milkman's only vice. Until 2002, when he was "warned off " by the Jockey Club for his race-fixing crimes, he could often be seen in his boxes at Ascot or Newmarket, where he would bet between [pound]50,000 and [pound]100,000 on horses. Through his betting, he was able effectively to launder his drugs profits. But Wright was nothing if not greedy. He bribed jockeys - including the disgraced Graham Bradley - to throw races. The bungs took various forms - sometimes it was a cash payment of [pound]5,000, sometimes cocaine or prostitutes, sometimes a night out at London nightclubs Annabel's or Tramp - but the result was always the same: Wright won.
A former associate admitted to the BBC in 2002 that "sometimes, when we put money on a race, we knew what was going to be first, second and third". It was later a matter of record in the criminal trial of his son, Brian Wright, that the Wright gang would work for days and weeks on particular races. Racing insiders say that Wright's gang phoned their contacts in the racing world to glean inside information, and persuaded the odd bent jockey to help them gain the "right result".
As well as helping him "re-invest" his cocaine money, horse racing gave Wright the chance to befriend celebrities. The Milkman would often boast that he had befriended Frank Sinatra, Jerry Hall and Clint Eastwood. The comedian Jim Davidson, who first met Wright at Kempton races in the early 1980s, became such a good friend that he asked the criminal to be the godfather to his son, and recently gave a character reference at Wright's trial. Davidson admits his first meeting with Wright made a lasting impression.
"I was in the bar at Kemp-ton," recalled Davidson, in a Panorama documentary. "This little man called 'Jimmy the One' came hobbling over and said, 'You want to know anything about betting, son, come and meet Brian.' Out would come a carrier bag and there'd be a loaf of bread of [pound]50 notes in it. He'd cut off a lump and say to Jimmy the One, 'Go and put that on."
Even since Wright's conviction, Davidson has remained loyal to him. "I stand by my sworn statement," he says, "and I feel very sorry that the jury has come to this decision. Brian Wright is, and always will be, my friend." There is no evidence to suggest that Davidson, or any other celebrities Wright met through racing, knew about their friend's source of income.
Despite his well-known friends and lavish lifestyle, Wright operated for most of his adult life outside the reach of the law. He had no bank accounts and no verifiable home address. He paid for his rented Chelsea flat in cash. He preferred public phones to mobiles. When he conducted business in London, he booked a suite at the Conrad Hotel in Chelsea Harbour under an alias.
Although Wright had his habits, he was careful not to leave clues to his whereabouts. A detective, who spent years investigating Wright, said, "It was almost as if he did not exist."
The authorities only started to close in on Wright in September 1996, when rough weather forced a yacht called Sea Mist to find shelter in Cork harbour. The yacht had been heading for the South coast of England, where its cargo would have been of-floaded onto a smaller, locally registered vessel and taken ashore. When Irish Customs officers searched the Sea Mist, they found 599kg of cocaine concealed in a dumb waiter. The British and Irish authorities immediately re-alised they had uncovered part of a monumental smuggling business. The yacht's skipper, John Earl Ewart, was arrested, and subsequently jailed. And, later that year, British Customs officers launched Operation Extend, specifically to curb Wright's smuggling activities.
