A SMUGGLER'S TALE: THE RICHEST MILKMAN IN THE WEST

Multimillion-pound cocaine smuggler, race-fixer, friend to the
stars... Ed Caesar tracks the rollercoaster rise and fall of
'Britain's wealthiest criminal', Brian Wright

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.

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
ocean-going 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 UKP360m into Great Britain. A recent survey for
the BBC3 Underworld Rich List suggested that Wright had earned himself
a UKP100m 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 UKP50,000 and UKP100,000 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 UKP5,000, 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 Kempton," 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 UKP50 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 offloaded 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 realised 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. The operation,
said an investigator, was "without parallel" in British history.

Operation Extend spent two years working on the Wright gang, during
which time they bugged his Chelsea flat, followed him to meetings, and
monitored his son, Brian, who - along with 14 other members of the
gang - would later be jailed for his part in Wright's activities.

In February 1999, Operation Extend had everything it needed. But, just
as it was about to pounce, Wright fled the country. And, as members of
his gang were rounded up in the United States, Britain and the
Caribbean, The Milkman began life as an exile in Northern Cyprus,
which has no extradition treaty with the UK. Indeed, until a BBC
Panorama team tracked him down in 2002, no one was sure where Wright
had disappeared to.

Even after the BBC had uncovered his whereabouts, there was nothing
the British police could do about it, and Wright continued to live a
life of luxury in the Turkish half of the island. In 2005, however,
either because he believed the authorities had struck a deal with
Britain, or because he was bored, he moved to Spain. And Spain, as he
knew, did have an extradition agreement with the UK - and Wright was
soon arrested.

It was the end of an adventure for Wright, who was born in Ireland,
one of nine children, and moved to north London at the age of 12. As a
child, he was not interested in school, deciding instead to work on
the market near his home, and, when he was old enough, to become a
croupier.

His interest in horse racing was fostered in his teens, and he earned
his first fast bucks by taking bets from workers on building sites.
Little by little, Wright transformed himself from a small-time bookie
into a big-time gambler. He boasted that on one day in 1973, he made
UKP50,000 from betting. One jockey, who knew him in that period, says he
always carried a roll of notes "that would choke a donkey".

Fifty pound notes will now have no value for Wright - cigarettes and
phone cards are much more use to him inside. But, as Wright's prison
term starts, he can take some cold comfort from the news that
Hollywood executives are said to be enthralled by the lawless
rollercoaster of his life, and are currently considering bids to
option his story. Who knows, in two years' time, Wright could be
watching a film of his life on the high-security wing television - if
he can persuade his fellow inmates to let him choose the channel.