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Revelations that a man charged under the National Security Act with foreign interference, was a special police constable, has thrown the spotlight on our disclosure that a jailed Welsh drug dealer had also been one, amid growing demands for greater vetting.
Chi Leung (Peter) Wai, of Staines-upon-Thames, Surrey is one of three people, who, apart from interfering on behalf of a foreign power, is also accused of illegally acting for Hong Kong. Along with the other two, Mr Wai has appeared in custody at Westminster Magistrates’ Court. He worked at Heathrow Airport for Border Force UK, and is alleged to have carried out surveillance as well as “hostile” reconnaissance. Mr Wai was a volunteer special constable with the City of London Police.
This fact has an uncanny echo of what happened in the case of a South Wales conman who is now in jail for serious drug offences, and was exclusively exposed by The Eye, whose legs were broken when a previous illegal deal soured.
Jail bird Howard Williams (who changed his name to James Daniels and has ‘run’ cafés or take-aways in South Wales as well as Spain), was a special constable with the police as well.
Williams/Daniels was a volunteer officer in the early 2000s and, like Mr Wai, had the authority of regulars in the police.
The College of Policing (CoP) declares that special constables are: “Voluntary officers with the same powers as regular officers, under the command of regular senior officers and with their own rank structure”. And that: “Specials take part in frontline police work. They can spend much of their time on the streets, doing intelligence-based patrols in crime hotspots or taking part in crime-prevention initiatives”.
But after Williams/Daniels was imprisoned, South Wales Police (SWP) changed tack completely from this pronouncement, and declared proudly on Facebook (FB): “Two men behind multiple cannabis factories worth up to 600k have been put behind bars. Following an investigation carried out by the Mid Glamorgan Organised Crime Unit, six large-scale cannabis factories were linked to two men.…Ashley Carter, aged 35 from #Rhondda, and Howard Williams, aged 46 from #Cardiff, were sentenced at Merthyr Crown Court”.
Two years ago Williams/Daniels (who had also branched out into property), was sentenced to four years and six months in prison for conspiracy to supply and produce cannabis. After he and his partner-in-crime were jailed, Detective Constable (DC) Chelsea Barrett, who led the case, said: “We know that many people think it is ‘just a bit of cannabis’ but any production of drugs is linked to wider operations. These large operations are often run by organised crime gangs, who are likely to engage in human trafficking and very serious violence involving weapons”.
Yet this disturbing information from The Eye is far from being the first time that Williams/Daniels has hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons, as with Mr Wai.
In the past his behaviour in his personal life as well as in business has been questionable to say the least.
Several years ago he announced on social media his engagement to a woman called Danni (or Danielle) Greer while he was still married to someone else.
Our journalists have shown as well how Williams/Daniels had opened a tanning studio in Cardiff, although like many of his ‘businesses’ this one also soon met trouble.
Williams/Daniels has admitted to being imprisoned, but described it in a FB post as a “short while”, when his convictions in fact total years. He claimed: “…when I was younger I did spend a short while in prison for fraud in the UK”.
However his prison terms did not, in fact, amount to a ‘short while’. Apart from, over 10 years, spending more than four of them in jail convicted of 25 deception counts (even before being put behind bars for his latest drug offences), he has been made bankrupt three times – in 2002, 2010 and 2015.
But despite these convictions in the future (information about Williams/Daniels’ behaviour which culminated in them was easily obtainable), he was still made a Special Constable.
During his previous career as an ‘Estate Agent’, the anger of one individual was clear on a property website: “He (Williams/Daniels) makes you pay circa £10k deposit and then disappears into the sunset”. At a property event in the South of England, The Eye were told that an investor had lost £30,000 to him. His extraordinary exploits have even been the subject of our satirical writer Edwin Phillips and Williams/Daniels has boasted of owning a boat as well as a jetski, which he has said on FB was for sale.
Plainly life was good for him, although it is doubtful that much was true, and he posted a YouTube interview on his property website where he bragged about his property ‘expertise’.
He claimed he had a “massive” estate agency business, but went from earning £20,000 a week to having just £56 in his pocket and living on the streets. Williams/Daniels also alleged he drove expensive cars (and photographs have been published), saying in the interview that it took just “24 hours” to turn the £56 into £1,000, yet many critics have questioned this pronouncement. One who is owed thousands of pounds by Williams/Daniels told us: “This is all made up. He lives in a complete fantasy world!”.
Williams/Daniels has, too, been in charge of marketing for a Spanish wine bar called ‘Blanco’ in Murcia, and he announced his engagement to Ms Greer on the bar’s website. But The Eye have divulged how over one Christmas and New Year, he warned customers on social media that they could no longer accept credit cards at Blanco, even though these periods are the busiest times of year for restaurants and it is almost unheard of for them only to take cash then.
He also ran dance nights at a disco in Spain called ‘Roldan’ but it closed soon after The Eye’s disclosures. Following them, Williams/Daniels asked a specialist company how to “get rid” of The Eye’s “negative” stories about him on the internet. He wrote: “When I google James daniels spain or James Daniels property or James Daniels murcia a load of website links appear for the-eye.wales which are negative reviews and not true (The Eye – nothing is untrue). How do I get rid of these an(d)how much does it cost? Also how long does it take?”.
Williams/Daniels needed hospital treatment after his legs were broken when an illegal drugs deal went wrong, and it has also been revealed on The Eye, how formerly he had teamed up with another ex-criminal from South Wales, who was also put behind bars for drug offences, to start a ‘charity’. He launched the ‘Crisis Housing Charity’ and asked for donations from the public in a venture designed ostensibly to help ex-convicts find homes. The ‘charity’ gave an address in Cardiff but does not now exist.
There is, however, mounting frustration that only The Eye have covered the exploits of Williams/Daniels. One who knows him well, told us: “I was totally ignored when I emailed (the mainstream media) back last year, I was so hopeful when it was the national police after him. He was also wanted for identification fraud here (Spain). Turns my stomach just thinking of what he is doing. Evil man”.
Our Editor Phil Parry has, as well, been subjected to a torrent of abuse on social media from Williams/Daniels and his supporters, following discoveries by The Eye’s journalists. His friends, wife and children, have been too.
In one tirade he wrote to him on FB: “You write total lies about people (The Eye – we only report facts), bully to the point of harassment and suicide, and will not answer a direct email? This is not journalism this is a mixture of Phil Parry (The ex journalist) and (others) you are pure scum!!!!! Let it be publicly known that The Eye does NOT care about people it just lies to make fictitious stories up. BULLYING, LIES, MENTAL HEALTH ABUSE TO NAME BUT A FEW!!!!!”.
In another he said: “I am have contacted you (sic) numerous times before asking why you consistently, stalk, bully and harass me? … You so far have asked the following for comments:
Thief
Abuser (The Eye have never said Williams/Daniels is an abuser).
Liar
Sex Offender (The Eye have never said Williams/Daniels is a sex offender).
Drug user (The Eye have never said Williams/Daniels is a drug user, just that he has dealt in illegal drugs).
Meanwhile his ex-business partner, Sam McManus (also known as ‘Georgeson’), has first-hand knowledge of his lies. He has admitted he too was conned by him and that Williams/Daniels was a ‘sick man’. Mr McManus explained how he was deceived along with everyone else, and told The Eye: “He (Williams/Daniels) has fooled many people and I can only be grateful that there are good investigative journalists like you guys who expose greedy people like him. It is embarrassing to admit that I am yet another victim of his greed”.
However it is clear that our stories about the escapades of Williams/Daniels have served a public interest, and stopped a LOT of people from being duped by a man who was a Special Constable.
The Eye were contacted by a driver for one of his cafés who offered extremely worrying information. He said: “He (Williams/Daniels) (is) not paying me for the work I did for him and he (is) also not paying the other drivers. Thank god I read your report on him, it save(d) me money and bother. The guy is a joke. I’m now £200 out of pocket, but it could be worst (sic)”.
A text message about Williams/Daniels said that he had: “…taken everything out AGAIN not paid the staff Owes one of the girls £500 locked up and empty”.
Earlier another staff member at one of his ‘cafés’ warned others on FB: “Nobody work for Crave desserts in Merthyr town, haven’t paid some of their staff for weeks, delivery drivers and kitchen staff, always says it will be in on Friday or Tuesday and I’m still waiting 5 weeks on along with others who worked there. Always got to beg for your money, Absolutely disgusting, you work the hours and expect to be paid! They have blocked me from their page and ain’t answering my messages, fuming!”.
The public has a right too to be fuming about the fact that a criminal now in jail was a Special Constable, like another man who was in court accused of “foreign interference”…
The memories of Phil’s astonishing decades-long award-winning career in journalism (during which he has charted the criminal career of Welshman Williams/Daniels from the beginning) as he was gripped by the rare disabling condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order it now!
Regrettably publication of another book, however, was refused, because it was to have included names.
Tomorrow – how a top-level review into BBC procedures which was revealed in a huge number of media outlets, and found that there were “risks to impartiality”, highlights extraordinary failures by the giant corporation during the appalling Huw Edwards and Gary Lineker fiascos, with one former executive telling The Eye: “Heads should roll”.
