Finding Mr Fox: 5. An unexpected meeting
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Before we begin, just to remind you, many of the people we've interviewed for this season of World of Secrets speak Portuguese, so their words are spoken by actors and members of our BBC team. Tucked away on a remote stretch of coastline is an old slate-roofed cottage, peering out over the sea. Half a mile from the nearest road, hidden from view by hills and overlooking a secluded bay,

It's a hard place to find. That's why it's been chosen. To give shelter from the bitterly cold November night to a gang of smugglers. But they're being watched. It's 1986. We're in Pembrokeshire, Wales, on one of the most westerly points of the UK. Around the cottage, hidden in the undergrowth, are surveillance officers from police and customs. Using binoculars and night vision equipment, they're keeping an eye on both the gang and the coastline.

It's a major undertaking involving some hundred officers. They've been tracking the smugglers for a year, following leads from London to the US, Canada, the Netherlands, Spain and Morocco. They've tailed the gang as they scouted possible landing sites for their shipment of drugs. Now they have to catch them in the act. One stormy Monday night, they spot an old fishing trawler, the Menou, moored close to the beach. The smugglers haven't picked a good time to land their cargo.

Fierce winds toss the menou on the waves. Officers watch as more than 80 suitcase-sized packages are lowered into two rubber dinghies attached to the trawler. They're nearly done when the dinghies break free and capsize, spilling the packages into the sea, along with two of the smugglers. Police and customs swoop. Three more men are arrested on the beach.

And in coordinated raids across the country, they pick up the rest of the gang. Five men and a woman. In total, the operation seizes a ton and a half of Moroccan cannabis. It's one of the biggest drug busts ever made on British shores. But the captain of the trawler somehow slips the net. He spots the police before they can reach him and sails off into the stormy night. Three boats patrol the shore. The helicopter hovers in the sky.

But the trawler and its captain are gone. By the time the Royal Navy catch up with the trawler, it's hundreds of miles away. For his role in the smuggling operation, the captain is sentenced to 12 years in prison. The name of this slippery customer? Robert Delbos. The same Robert Delbos who 30 years later would work on the Rich Harvest. The same Robert Delbos who was extradited to Brazil.

The same Robert Delbus who was accused of being part of a plot to traffic more than a tonne of cocaine to Europe. A plot Brazilian police say was masterminded by Fox. And the same Robert Delbus who we managed to get on a line from Brazil. I spent hours with him, he told me all this. He told me his whole history, his life and his exploiting. I mean, what do you want to know? Just ask me a question and I'll see if I can remember what he told me, yeah?

This is World of Secrets. Season 5, Finding Mr Fox. A BBC World Service investigation with me, Yemi Siadegoke. And me, Colin Freeman. Episode 5, An Unexpected Meeting.

So in spring of 2018, I think I got offered two jobs. One job was from Central America to Europe, five tons of gear. They wanted to pay me three million. Robert Delbosch says he regularly gets offered jobs to sail boats full of drugs, not because of his criminal past, but because he's a good sailor.

The guy said, I can make you a million. I said, no, I'm not bothered. To be clear, was that cocaine? Yeah, cocaine, yes, cocaine. It's 2019. I'm in a BBC studio in London. Robert is in Brazil. He tells me he's sitting out in front of his apartment, which looks out over the sea. He says he's still fighting the drug smuggling charges, but that most of them have been dropped. He's no longer held on remand in jail, he says. Just some legal formalities to sort out before he can return to Britain.

I mean, I do not drive cocaine boats. I never have and I never will. I don't like the drug, I don't like the people, and the people are stupid who are in the trade. And they're not nice people. I mean, this is why I never went to the authorities. Instead, the police came for him. He was picked up in Spain on an Interpol Red Notice, flown to Brazil and questioned by authorities there.

Fox managed to avoid extradition on a technicality. And Andre, the Brazilian police chief who investigated him, told us he has no idea where Fox is now. We think Robert might be our best route to finding him. We start at the beginning. I left Gloucestershire and I went to the Costa del Sol. And while I was down there, I was informed that there was a boat down there, the Rich Harvest, that was looking for somebody to carry out a refit on it.

It's 2015 and Robert tells me he's working in Spain, fixing up a yacht. It's what he's done his whole life, find and refit boats for wealthy clients. This particular boat is called the Rich Harvest. While he's working on it, the boat changes hands. Nothing unusual there, it happens all the time. But the new owner, a man called George Saul, who goes by the name of Fox, says he can get the renovation finished more cheaply in Brazil.

Robert says he'd never met Fox before, but he agrees to sail the yacht across the Atlantic with him. Once in Brazil, Robert says Fox asked if he would stay on to oversee the work there. It's a good offer. Fox would pay him well and he could live cheaply. Well, I thought, you know, fine, I've got an apartment in the boatyard, I've got internet, I've got 500 a week coming in, I've got my pension. You know, it's quite a nice little living. So I carried on. The work to the boat is extensive.

They fix leaks, repair the deck, fix up the old fuel tanks and build new water tanks under a couple of the beds. Finally, after about six months in a Brazilian marina, Robert says he tells Fox the renovations are nearly finished. The boat was ready as far as I was concerned to sail to Europe and Saul told me he was coming over with crews from Europe to pick her up. Robert's work done. They part ways.

He leaves Brazil, carries on with his life, refitting boats for other clients. And, as we've heard, the rich harvest embarks on its journey across the Atlantic. But several months later, Robert says Fox turns up at his home in Spain unannounced. I came back from lunch one day and he was standing on my doorstep. So he was a bit agitated and he wanted to talk to me. And he then proceeded to tell me the tale that he'd...

Robert also told Brazilian police that Fox said he wanted to kill himself for having put innocent people on a boat full of drugs.

What account did he give of why he had used these guys and what did you say to him about that? Well,

I mean, this is completely beyond the pale. I mean, you don't do this. I mean, he was a stupid man who was greedy. Instead of paying the crew properly and getting himself a professional bloody smuggling crew, he hired four innocent guys and thought he could put like two, two and a half mil in his pocket. He got offered three million euros to do the job. He would have spent maybe half a million all told on the boat.

How do you know these prices, by the way? Are these prices that he told you or were you just familiar with this stuff anyway? He told me that, but it's common knowledge. The price is what you pay. I mean, I've been off with work before. According to Robert, he only got involved in smuggling that one time off the coast of Wales. He's keen to point out it was back in the 1980s. It was cannabis, not cocaine.

And he got caught and convicted. I spent 18 months in solitary waiting for trial. And then I spent four and a half years in the special security units. And, yeah, a lot of fun. Why did they put you in a special security unit? They thought I was going to escape. Oh, I see. Oh, right. Yeah. Why did they think that? Were you going to try? Of course I was. I was young and stupid. Yeah.

Robert claims he learnt his lesson after that time in prison. No, it's just not worth it. Eight years of my life for nothing. But fast forward to 2019 and here he is again, battling drug charges over the rich harvest. He says Brazilian authorities spent months trying to figure out his role. All while he languished on remand in a Brazilian jail. Not a fun place, not a fun place.

At one point, he says he was put into isolation. There's no books. You're not allowed to write letters. The only book allowed in there is the Bible. There's no phone calls. There's absolutely nothing. And the only thing to do is to kill mosquitoes and watch the ants carry the bits off down the wall.

After a time, he says, they moved him to another wing. They put me onto a gang wing, expecting I'd think that I'd have trouble with the gang. But the gang boss, figuratively speaking, put his arm around me and welcomed me. They looked after me. I had absolutely no problem with the gang members at all. And I was in the cell with...

Seven other guys. No problem. Just only had one problem there. One guy tried to be stupid and that was it. What happened when he tried to be stupid? He wouldn't leave me alone. He just put his hands on me and he was prodding me. So I just took him out. I just took him down to the floor. And yeah. Were you scared being in this gang wing with all these gang members? Why did this particular gang leader sort of protect you, do you think?

He was a nice guy, but he'd shot a few people. But he was, I mean, they're a funny breed. There will be some people who will look to the fact that you have this conviction for smuggling cannabis and they will say there can be no smoke without fire. Oh, yeah, fine. But the thing is, let's put it this way. I'm sitting in an apartment on the waterfront in Brazil.

The judge has ordered me to be released. Now, I'd hardly be sitting on the waterfront with no bail if they thought they were going to put a case against me. There was no case against me. So are you the criminal mastermind of this international cartel then? No, I'm an old age pensioner who's just trying to get by in life. Just an old age pensioner.

Robert says he's hired a private detective to help him get justice. So where is Fox? Yeah, he's on the run, he's in hiding, but no, he's got his head down in England.

I heard he was trying to get hold of a Romanian passport, but I don't know if he did manage to get that one. Are you going to try and track Saul down? I'm not going to try. I am going to track Saul down. And what are you going to say to him when you find him, or if you find him? That he owes me a bit of money. How much does he owe you? 18 months of misery. A few months after we speak, Robert messages me to say the charges against him have been dropped. He tells me that he's left Brazil and is now back in England.

We make vague arrangements to meet, but then COVID-19 seems the world grind to a halt. Eventually, he stops replying to my messages. My emails go unanswered. Just like Fox, Robert has disappeared.

Hello, I'm Simon Jack. And I'm Sing Sing. And together we host Good Bad Billionaire, the podcast exploring the minds, the motives and the money of some of the world's richest individuals. Every episode we pick a billionaire and we find out how they made their money. And then we judge them. Are they good, bad or just another billionaire? Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts. In the early 80s when heroin sort of kicked off in Dublin...

I went to a flat where I knew somebody was selling heroin. This is Michael O'Sullivan. And I went up and knocked on the door and this big guy opened the door and I asked him for heroin. And he produced some.

At this point, Michael identifies himself as a police officer. The guy with the heroin quickly turns and runs into the apartment. It was a warm day in May and he had a fire blazing and I quickly realised why, because he threw the drugs into the fire and ran towards the window. Michael has a decision to make. Does he run after the dealer or does he try to save the evidence, which is currently burning in a fire?

I put my hand in and grabbed the drugs, which were in a plastic bag and were melting, so the hot plastic stuck to my hand and badly burnt it, but I had the drugs. And as he went to go out the window, I hung on to him, basically, and screamed for assistance, and eventually the reinforcements came and he was arrested.

We've heard Robert Delboss' explanation of how he says cocaine ended up on the rich harvest, but how does the trade look from the other side, from the authorities trying to stop it? Michael joined the Irish police back in the 1980s. He spent years with the drug squad, tackling local gangs in Dublin, before a change in job saw him shift focus. Until 2021, Michael was head of the Maritime Analysis and Operations Centre, based in Lisbon in Portugal.

Here, his focus was criminal networks involved in the international drug trade. In the year I left, we had seized just over €4bn worth of cocaine and intercepted some 26 vessels. The aim of the EU-funded agency is to use intelligence to target boats still at sea before they've unloaded their cargo. Once it hits the streets of

Any European city, you know, it's dispersed within hours. Can you tell us about the impact that the cocaine trade has on the streets of Europe? Yeah, cocaine, unlike heroin, is the lifeblood of organised crime. And I'd say almost all criminal gangs are involved in the use and distribution of cocaine. Why? Because it's very lucrative. And it's based on the principle that there is more disposable income now in Europe.

People are buying it. They think they're not going to get addicted. They think it's a good social drug. It's very fashionable, very sexy. They don't think that they're fueling organised crime. In the case of the Rich Harvest, a number of innocent sailors from Brazil and one from France were hired to sail the yacht across the Atlantic, unaware that there was a tonne of cocaine on board. Is that a common tactic?

It's not that common. It is not the most ideal way of doing business because you want your investment in safe hands coming across the Atlantic. You don't want to leave anything to chance. People who will know that this stuff has got to get through, not to give up lightly and not to give up after some storm or some engine problems and

you know, people who are, who will avoid law enforcement. What Michael says seems to tally with Robert Del Bos's account that using an unwitting crew is not the way things are usually done. All these golden rules for success. And it seems the rich harvest did the complete opposite. Stopping in Cape Verde after its engine broke and the crew fell out with each other. The way it raised its flag to announce its presence to local authorities.

how it arrived late at night but waited until daylight to approach land and called on a tugboat to help drag them to shore. None of this is exactly subtle. It's possible that some unknown third party planted the drugs on the boat in secret. Perhaps they were going to intercept the rich harvest at sea. But that's not what the Brazilian authorities think. They believe Fox masterminded the whole operation. We want to know what Fox has to say. We've just got to find him.

You know, in the old days, you would go about asking, you know, pick up the phone, make some calls to some sources, get some testimonies and try to narrow down the location of a person based on what people tell you, what your sources tell you. But now, of course, you can just do it from your laptop. We've enlisted some help in our hunt for Fox. This is Ayom, another journalist on our team. He specialises in open source investigations, OSINT.

He uses information that's available online to find hidden clues. For example, he's revealed people's identities by tracing their online personas and geolocated when and where videos were filmed by examining the outline of hills and shadows cast by trees.

We often use social media and they've got videos, photos, and from those videos and photos, you can maybe find crews where they're working, where they actually go to the gym, where they actually drink their coffee, things like that. Ayum thinks he's got something on Fox. He wants to talk me through it.

So given that the social media platforms

weren't that helpful. How else did you sort of go about trying to track them down? The next step often is you try, you know, to look at people who have jobs, activities, hobbies. And so, you know, you can get results maybe with

blogs or registries and bingo there were definitely some results actually there were a couple of results with in total seven different addresses and all of those addresses pointed to Norwich a town in the east part of the UK so that

gave a big clue and they were all in norwich so i guess that narrows down the place quite a bit absolutely big time that's kind of you know we started from we don't know where this guy is he could be anywhere in the world to now okay like all his business activities put him in norwich um the only issue is you know he's got a business renting out properties so you never know if that

Those addresses are actually the ones he lives in, one of those he's renting out. This feels like a huge moment. We have all these breadcrumbs leading towards the city of Norwich in the UK. As we learnt from the Brazilian police, it's where he was born. And it's where he was sending money to pay for the renovation work when the rich harvest was in Brazil. Maybe, finally, the net is closing.

But it's still not clear how recent the clues are. It's going to take I.M. some time to sift through all these leads. Have you got the map? Yep. OK, right. I think, yeah, this is it here. I keep thinking about another hunt for fox. The one that Robert Delvers told us about. The last we heard, he was on Fox's trail too. That was five years ago. I've tried several times to restart the conversation with Robert, but I've heard nothing back.

So, in a last-ditch effort, I managed to get hold of what might be a home address for him in the UK. It's worth a shot. I think this might be it. Oh, look, looks like he might actually be in because there is a car parked outside.

It's not every day that I show up unannounced on the doorstep of a convicted drug smuggler. I've no idea how he'll react. But last time we spoke, he alluded to having more useful information on Fox. OK, I'm going to put the microphones away because I haven't spoken to him for several years. And if he does answer the door, I don't want to be shoving a microphone in his face straight away. That might just make him shut the door again.

So, nervously, I knock on his door. It turns out I needn't have worried. I get a warm welcome. Robert leads me along a path down the side of his house and into a modest back garden.

We sit on patio furniture on the edge of a small lawn, surrounded by flowers. And porcelain-painted butterflies, which hang on the fence. What's happened with your court case? Oh, go on. They're completely exonerated and, yeah, court-free, yes.

We checked, and in his summing up, the judge overseeing the case noted evidence of a friendly relationship between Robert and Fox. The judge says it's unequivocal that Robert worked on the renovation of the rich harvest, but it's unproven that Robert knew about a plan to smuggle the drugs. And so, the judge concludes, the charges are unfounded and Robert is acquitted.

- Where was it we lost touch to? - I don't know. I've been travelling there. I don't know. Robert tells me that a lot has happened since our last interview. He's been treated for cancer, had Covid and now has long Covid. He says he still sails yachts but no longer has the strength to pull the sails up and down by himself.

If you remember our previous conversation, you seemed to know a bit about the rates that people charged for trafficking and so on. Did you still get people doing that? No, not these days, no. I'm still old, I'm tired. I ask about Fox, or George Saw, whether he has any new information.

I don't think so. I mean, I gave up filming pretty much everything. I sold you last time, didn't I? Yeah. Um... Well, I mean, he was just the bloody owner of the boat, as far as I was concerned. I mean, I don't know what he got up to in his spare time. I'm not sure I'm making much progress here, but there's something I have to ask, something that's been niggling away at me. Why would Fox choose to seek out Robert and then confess to duping the sailors?

It seems like a convenient story, which could have helped bolster Robert's own claims that he too was duped. So why would Fox admit to having used the sailors on the rich harvest? Did you go to see him or did he come to see you? He came to see me. Why do you think that Fox came to see you after? No idea. No idea whatsoever. Right. No idea. I never have understood that one. We talked for ages.

but it's a strange conversation. If anything, he seems to know less than he did last time we spoke. He says it was all a long time ago now. Maybe that private eye he hired wasn't much use after all. Or perhaps he's just been more careful about what he says.

And I think you also said you had a private detective on it and all that. Yeah, I'm pretty close to him, yes. I should get him this year. Do you know where he is or can you tell us where he is? He's in England, let's put it that way. Yeah, yeah. What are you going to do? I'll have a chat with him. That's all. I'll just have a chat. I feel he owes me my legal fees and nothing else. Yeah, yeah. It's clear we're not going to get anywhere. It's time to leave. Elsewhere, our colleague, Ayum, has had a breakthrough.

One day I opened his Instagram and suddenly it's public. Oh, wow. I can see all his images. Interesting. I don't know why he did that. Maybe he felt there wasn't any more risk to him. His account is a goldmine of information. Over the years, he's tagged posts in Gibraltar, Botswana, the Virgin Islands, Spain, Berlin and the Netherlands. But most of his posts are in the UK and many of them are recent.

So what type of stuff do you see? You know, he likes to go to the gym and give some weights and, you know, kind of lots of muscles. Big guy, really into motorbikes as well. Also, he's got distinctive and big white again, rover. They're not discreet at all then? No. And I bet not many people have that. So it's it's it's pretty unique.

He's also got his dog that follows him everywhere he goes. Ayum's also found a series of photos and videos posted by Fox that looked like they were all taken in the same house. Let me just share my screen. That's one of the images where you've got his motorbike and he's filming his motorbike. Oh, yeah, yeah. As you can see, he's got that pavement path leading to his front door. It's very distinctive.

The video reveals a very distinctive tiled path in Fox's garden. Ayam wants to see if he can spot that same path in images of the addresses he's already linked to Fox in Norwich. So what I did is, one by one, I went to different addresses on Google Street View, and in one of them, Bing, pointing that this was likely the address where the video was taken.

He looks for other clues to confirm he's got the right place. And so I looked at another image. You see the window, you see the motorbike, the same one that we saw before. And in the background, you see a house with exactly the roof and satellite dish. For me, the detail that was it is really that pavement path leading to his front door. Just because it's so unique, that's it. We've got him.

That's it. We have an address. So we're off to Norwich to see if we can find Mr Fox to hear what he has to say about the allegations against him. That's next time on World of Secrets. This has been episode five of six of season five of World of Secrets. Finding Mr Fox from the BBC World Service.

If you like the story so far, then please leave us a review so others can find out more. I'm Colin Freeman. And I'm Yemi Siadigoke. The producer is Charlotte MacDonald. The executive producer is Joe Kent. The series editor is Matt Willis. The production coordinator, Gemma Ashman. And the sound design and mix are by Nigel Appleton. Additional production is by Ayam Leroy, Christine Kist, Nick Norman-Butler and Chiara Frankavila.

At the World Service, Cat Collins is a senior producer and John Manel the commissioning editor.

Hello, I'm Simon Jack. And I'm Xing Xing. And together we host Good Bad Billionaire, the podcast exploring the minds, the motives and the money of some of the world's richest individuals. Every episode we pick a billionaire and we find out how they made their money. And then we judge them. Are they good, bad or just another billionaire? Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts.