BBC executive paid £52,000 to two gangsters who tortured a drug dealer to death in 2003

BBC executive Fiona Campbell who was behind hit TV shows Fleabag and Killing Eve paid tens of thousands of pounds to two gangsters who tortured a drug dealer to death in front of his children in 2003.

Christopher Guest More, 43, was convicted yesterday of the murder of Brian Waters, 44, who was a cannabis dealer and was tortured to death at a farmhouse in Tabley, Cheshire in 2003.

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Waters was murdered by More and Jimmy Raven who were both members of a gang of six and also cousins. Jimmy Raven was jailed a year after Brian's killing in 2004 but More fled and went on the run with a stolen identity.

More escaped justice for 16 years, until he was discovered in 2019 living a playboy lifestyle in Malta, where he skippered multi-million pound yachts under the name Andrew Lamb.

He was extradited back to the UK and went on trial at Chester Crown Court last month.

Following the jury’s guilty verdict only yesterday the Mail revealed that both More and Raven worked as undercover operatives for Fiona Campbell, now the Editor in Chief at BBC Three.

The investigation found that Miss Campbell knew Raven had a conviction for violence but allowed him and More, who had been cleared of rape aged 18, to work for the publicly funded news company.

The two men were paid £51,864.07 for one film on counterfeiters and were still being consulted over post-production issues when the pair murdered Mr Waters.

The BBC still chose to broadcast the film they had paid the gangsters for, including the pair’s secretly filmed footage, despite the fact Raven had already been jailed and More remained on the run.

The men were also paid thousands for earlier BBC projects commissioned by Miss Campbell, with More’s payments for 2002 to 2003 totalling £42,000.

She told police she did not ask them how they obtained information. She was criticised by a judge in a trial related to the pair’s counterfeiting programme for allowing them to operate without effective scrutiny.