EXCLUSIVE: John 'Goldfinger' Palmer had mystery corrupt Met Police contacts who may never ha

MURDERED: John Palmer had links to corrupt police who may never have been identified (PA)

MURDERED gangster John 'Goldfinger' Palmer was aided by an Essex stockbroker who had his own network of "corrupt" police officers, it is claimed in a secret Met Police report.

The unnamed police officers may never have been identified by the Met Police Anti Corruption Command, we can reveal.

Palmer, 65, was shot dead at his home in South Weald, near Brentwood, Essex, in June 2015.

A number of his former associates are currently on trial in Madrid, Spain, facing fraud charges in connection with his timeshare empire on Tenerife, said to have ripped off 1,600 customers.

The secret Operation Tiberius report was compiled by the Met Police in 2002 to investigate the risk of corrupt officers aiding organised crime groups.

It looked at eight identified organised crime groups, suspected of infiltrating the force and being aided by corrupt officers who would tell them when they were under investigation or due to be raided.

The "Palmer Syndicate" was believed to have three former and two then serving corrupt Met Police officers who are named in the report.

SECRET: Operation Tiberius report says the officers had not been identified

However, it said the Essex-based stockbroker was a key member of the syndicate, and had his own corrupt officers who at the time had yet to be identified.

He was also believed to have a contact in the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions.

The report said: "(Name removed) is of particular interest with regard to his previously unidentified police contacts and rumours that he has contacts within the DPP's office. "Development is under way to identify (his) contacts."

The report said the stockbroker acted as a "conduit" between the bent officers and Palmer who wanted information police held about him.

According to Tiberius, the stockbroker, who we are not naming, was arrested during a major operation which investigated drugs and money laundering linked to another crime gang in east London, but there is no record of him ever having been charged.

Palmer, once believed to be Britain’s richest criminal with a £300 million fortune, was due to stand trial with the associates on fraud offences and a firearms charge, but he was killed soon after the prosecution was announced.

He was previously jailed over the scam selling non-existent timeshares in the UK in 2001, but Spanish prosecutors said he continued to run it from behind bars for four years.

Palmer got his nickname after being acquitted of smelting gold bars stolen in the notorious 1983 Brink’s Mat robbery.

The Tiberius report added: "Although Palmer has recently been sentenced to a term of imprisonment for time share fraud, he still exerts influence over his criminal network of experienced drug importers and money launderers."

Palmer's network was separately under surveillance by the intelligence service and Serious Organised Crime Agency (now National Crime Agency) since 1999 from RAF Spadeadam in Cumbria in an operation code named Alpine due to concerns about the amount of Met Police corruption linked to him.

The top secret surveillance continued until his death.

Former Met detectives have said that many of the recommendations made in Tiberius to clean up the force and bring down the syndicates never actually happened.

There are ongoing calls for a Government inquiry into the extent of police corruption linked to organised crime across the country.

This came after we revealed that such an inquiry due to be held in 2014 after the existence of Operation Tiberius first became known was never held.

We asked the Met Police if the corrupt officials in question were ever later identified, but a spokesman refused to answer, saying the force would not publicly comment on Operation Tiberius due to it secret status.