Catching The Kingpins

Original version

BBC Radio 4

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

BBC Radio 4 LW

Gangster

Podcasts

Factual: Crime & Justice: True Crime

The boxer turned bouncer who was gunned down on Tyneside in 1993

Viv Graham ran a pub and club protection empire which spanned Newcastle and beyond.

How did he build his fearsome reputation, and what led to his brutal, unsolved murder?

A new series of Gangster tells the story of Viv Graham, a man who ran a protection empire which spanned Newcastle and beyond.

Viv Graham, a 17-stone man mountain, a man feared and revered in equal measure, came to dominate Tyneside’s nightlife through brutal and uncompromising violence.

His murder, in an organised hit on New Year’s Eve 1993, sparked recriminations and repercussions which echo to this day. It remains one of the country’s most notorious unsolved murders.

Catching the Kingpins

BBC Radio 4 FM

Gangster: Catching the Kingpins: Catching the Kingpins: 6. Final Reckoning

Catching the Kingpins: 6. Final Reckoning

BBC Radio 5 Live - Gangster, Catching the Kingpins, Catching the Kingpins: 6. Final Reckoning

What did the EncroChat hack reveal about how OCGs work?

EncroChat data revealed things about OCGs that surprised even the police. Plus, how a legal technicality could blow the entire EncroChat investigation.

The EncroChat hack has given the police unprecedented access to the secrets of organised crime. Nearly four years on from the hack, the detective who led the Met’s EncroChat investigation, DCI Driss Hayoukane, reveals what the police have learnt about OCGs which they didn’t know before. 

Presenter Mobeen Azhar hears about the impact of the EncroChat operation from Driss and from the National Crime Agency. There have been thousands of arrests, 200 threats to life averted and tonnes of drugs seized. But has taking out the kingpins cut crime?   
 
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  
Production coordinator: Juliette Harvey 
Development Executive: Anya Saunders  
Editorial Policy Advice: Su Pennington  
Legal advice: Hashim Mude and Andrew Downey  
Consulting editor: Steve Boulton  
Studio recording: Aaron Cazzola 

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

Gangster: Catching the Kingpins

BBC Radio 5 Live

The UK’s home of live news and live sport.

The UK’s home of live news and live sport. With live Premier League and FA Cup football, and Formula 1, Olympics and cricket coverage.

Factual: Crime & Justice

What happens when the police crack an encrypted phone network favoured by criminals?

The inside story of the biggest organised crime bust in British policing history. It happens in 2020 when police penetrate an encrypted phone network favoured by criminals.

A 6-part true crime podcast documenting inside story of 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 rare 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.  
 
But 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.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Gangster

Catching the Kingpins

Catching the Kingpins: 6. Final Reckoning

Genres

Brand

Series

BBC Radio 4 LW

About BBC Radio 4